Case File: Super-X
by Sophie3
Summary: It was inevitable. Dean and Sam Winchester spent their lives on the edge of what people thought they knew about the world and the truth. But it was the life they were used to and they didn't expect that to ever change. Until Fox Mulder recognizes a man in a diner who's supposed to be dead and who has an X-File thicker than the bible.
1. Chapter 1

Notes:

My apologies to the people of Owl's Head and Malone. I visited once and it was awesome, so I picked it as my small town for a case fic. I may have abused it some in the process. Standard disclaimers apply, no real people were used. :)

But we should all write Supernatural case fic about real places.

Also! For those who know me, be reassured! I have in fact completed this entire fic! I'm just editing right now and will have chapters up regularly.

Special thank you to **Black-Haired Girl** (found here on ) for being an amazing cheerleader, my X-Files pro and a great beta!

* * *

It was a little after 10 o'clock in a small dinner off of I-81 in the southern portion of Virginia. A waitress had just dropped off a couple of morning specials – eggs, toast, shredded hashbrowns and limp bacon. It was late in the morning rush, and the eggs were the only thing still warm. But that's what you got when you didn't bother to stumble in for breakfast until nearly noon on a weekday. She topped off the coffee again before she left and ignored the greenish look one of the two boys had.

There was a moment of silence as they both stared at their options.

"I don't think I can do it, Sammy."

"It's food. You love food."

"Not today."

Sam Winchester gamely picked up his fork and set about cutting everything up into bite size pieces. Focusing on making each piece even made it easier to ignore the smell. Fried eggs weren't the strongest smell, but it wouldn't take much after the night they had had. His brother still refused to move, staring at his plate as if he expected it to come to life and try to choke him to death. Which, considering their line of work, was maybe not too far out of the realm of possibility. But it felt like a dare pushing past something that had his older brother quaking in his boots, so Sam speared a chunk of runny over-easy eggs and lifted it off of the plate.

Yellow yolk dribbled off, a bright cheerful color.

"I think I'm going to be sick."

"They're fine," Sam insisted, still holding it aloft. "Fully cooked. No – no rotting."

Dean groaned. "Don't. Don't say that word."

Sam squared his shoulders and shoved the whole thing in his mouth. And okay, it did kind of taste like rubber and sulfur and grease, but it was diner eggs – the same thing it had been his whole life and not a bit different from what it was 24 hours ago when they had last had breakfast.

That had been before their latest hunt – a job that had included a satanic coven of witches with delusions of grandeur, a complex ritual requiring an unnatural amount of chicken blood and a cursed chicken farm that looked more like something out of a zombie movie than the Virginia countryside.

There'd been a lot of blood and guts – thankfully not human this time – but the rotten eggs were what had truly made the night one both brothers wished to never remember or smell ever again.

"Eat your eggs, Dean," Sam said before doggedly alternating bites of slimy egg with anything else on the plate.

"You eat eggs," Dean grumbled back before diving in for the poor quality bacon like it was filet mignon.

It was easier once they both got started. Neither had a particularly weak stomach. After all, you learned quick to eat when and what you could as a hunter. And a little half-rotten, festering, avian adventure was not the worst thing they had experienced. Eventually Dean got the idea of covering his in ketchup and plowed through them as fast as humanly possible. It wasn't a pretty sight.

"Dude, gross."

"Whatever." It wasn't like this was a classy joint. The town had three gas stations, three fast food joints and the one diner. It was the usual crowd at such places. One family passing through. One family clearly not and not happy about it. A few professional drivers and one couple in suits. Dean kept glancing over that way. Sam couldn't remember them clearly, but he had a vague notion of business wear a little too nice for this part of the country. Dean sure was interested. There'd been a lady, but Dean didn't usually go for the librarian or secretary type unless they were featured in a porno.

"We got admirers," Dean muttered into his coffee.

Sam didn't even twitch. "Where?" he asked, even though he had a fairly good idea. He was used to reacting to his brother's cues.

"Your 5 o'clock."

"Just the two?" Sam asked back, keeping it calm and casual and steady, like any other couple of guys talking about the weather.

"Only see the two." Dean made it a point to look the opposite way. Didn't want to risk staring while he described them. "Suits. Fancy. Man and a woman. A bit too stand-offish to be locals. He's carrying. And staring like he wants me to ask him to dance."

"Feds?" Sammy asked, his voice going a little tight now. God, the last thing they needed was to be entangled in the FBI again. As terrible as everything that went down with Henrickson was, at least the brothers were once more officially declared dead. At the time, Sam had been too desperate trying to save his brother from his demon deal to fully appreciate being nothing more than a ghost to official channels. After Dean went to Hell, during that time when Sam thought he'd never get him back, - well, the law hadn't been of much concern to Sam.

Things were different now, of course. Sam had to think long term for the two of them, since Dean certainly didn't seem too. Dean literally had a second chance at life and yet seemed determined to take risks every opportunity he got. Sam shouldn't be surprised, but it made his blood pressure spike each time. And they certainly didn't need any added complications right now. Lilith was as dangerous as ever, and despite the help of angels and Ruby, the Winchesters were still struggling to keep her from starting the apocalypse - the actual apocalypse! It had the two brothers running all over the country trying to stop the demons from unlocking seals.

And here they were, just trying to get a bite to eat and relax for a moment, and they pick the one diner with feds.

"Maybe he won't recognize us?" Sam asked hopefully. After all, surely not every FBI agent could memorize the face of every wanted murder/bank robber. And Dean had been declared dead. Twice now. Surely, even they couldn't be that unlucky.

Sam met his brother's eyes and they both knew better.

"Goddamnit."

10:17 am

Raphine, Virginia

Special Agent Fox Mulder stabbed his overcooked eggs. He squashed at his hash-browns with his fork until they better resembled mashed potatoes. He tore his toast into little pieces and flopped his half cooked piece of bacon about like it was a piece of string.

Special Agent Dana Scully ignored him. She continued reading her paper, spreading it out on the table so as not to be rude. She ate her lukewarm oatmeal and the excellent cup of fresh fruit and considered it not one of the worst breakfasts she had ever had and certainly not bad for a pit stop on their way back to northern Virginia.

She waited until she finished with the editorials before commenting. "I don't know why you are so upset, Mulder," she chided.

There was a potent silence from across the table.

She tsked. "We did find out who was responsible for the mutilated bodies," she reminded him. "Which is exactly what we were tasked to do, Mulder. Just because it was a human – though a clearly psychotic individual – does not make it any less of an achievement."

The uneaten plate of food was shoved aside and there was a loud huff as Mulder settled himself more comfortably in a petulant sprawl.

She sighed, shaking her head at his antics but still trying to get through to him that this work still mattered. That maybe they didn't find what he had been hoping for, but they should still be proud of themselves for having done a good job and saving lives. And while she knew those things were just as important to Mulder as they were to her, she was also well aware that his _ambitions_ were of a different, more unworldly sort. "We also discovered exactly how he removed the lungs without performing an evisceration," she added cheerfully. Certainly that was odd enough for him. "That was interesting, wasn't it, Mulder?"

Finally he met her eyes with a scowl, wrinkling up his nose. "Gross," he pronounced. "Scully, that was gross. Don't go forgetting on me which medical things are 'a bit nauseating but still very interesting' and which ones are just plain nasty." He said it petulantly, but she could see the hint of smile. He might not want to know _everything_ about the more visceral part of her job, but he still often appreciated it.

She smiled back. "You have to give him credit for coming up with a new method for tissue removal."

"The Egyptians were doing that long before. Though where they learned it from would be a much more interesting question."

"I think you're confusing certain organs."

He gave her the look that made it clear he thought she was the one confused and uninformed. But before he could get warmed up to the topic of ancient mummies and associated theories, something else caught his eye and he got that distant look she was used to. She decided to wait five minutes and if he didn't start sharing, then she would pry it out of him. It gave her enough time to finish her food and the entertainment section.

"Should I turn around, Mulder, or will whatever it is disappear if I try to look at it directly?"

"Probably," he muttered back, as distracted as ever. "Ever see someone and swear you know who they are, except that person's supposed to be dead?"

"Lately?" Scully countered. "Far too often."

"Hmm," was the only answer she got. He was still staring and now it was becoming harder to resist the urge to turn around and look herself. Mulder did have a talent for finding the more – interesting – things in life. But Scully was also a professional and knew better than to rubber-neck.

Unfortunately, she also still made professional assumptions, like that Mulder wouldn't get it into his head to bounce to his feet and walk over to casually say good morning.


	2. Chapter 2

"Fuckity fuck fucking fuck."

Dean muttered it sharply under his breath but Sam heard it loud and clear and knew exactly what it meant. He dropped his toast like it had burned him and shifted so he could get out from the booth more efficiently. If they were going to have to make a run for it, it wouldn't due to get his feet tangled up. Sam had better access to the front door, but they'd parked the Impala around the back out of habit and the side door would be the fastest way to their ticket out of this mess. Both of them were armed, in more ways than one, but the last thing they needed was a reprise of the O.K. Corral.

Dean seemed to be on the same page with this one, but instead of leaning towards the flight side of fight or flight, he was going with the good old standby of ignoring the problem. He had his head turned away towards the window as if he believed that if he ignored it hard enough, the Fed would go away.

Their luck was far too shitty for that kind of break.

Still, Sam wasn't expecting the guy to stop by their table, hands in his pockets and a dopey looking half smile on his face, to say nothing more than "Hello."

Dean's eyes flickered over and caught Sam's, the what-the-fuck message loud and clear. But Dean had enough sense to keep his mouth shut tight and leave this cluster-fuck to the only one of them that knew how to keep his cool.

Sam put on his best college boy smile and didn't have to fake a bit of awkward confusion. "Hi?" he asked. Sam darted his eyes to the side quickly, but the woman was still in her booth, staring at them like she also didn't know what was going on.

"You boys headed north?" the man asked. As of that very moment, both Winchester boys had no plan other than to get as far away from this place as possible. So it wasn't hard to keep their faces blank. But the guy didn't wait for any kind of response. "We're heading up to Washington," he told them. "I'm trying to talk Dana into stopping by the caverns, but she doesn't think it's worth the stop. You two ever been?" He paused long enough to meet Sam's eyes briefly before staring long and hard at the side of Dean's head as if he was willing him to turn and face him. "What do you think?" he asked Dean.

And okay, it was beyond weird and suspicious as hell, but Sam knew how to roll with it and lie like a professional. If this guy wanted to make small talk about the Virginia cavern systems, Sammy could regale him with a detailed description. After all, despite having a somewhat patchy formal childhood education, he knew every major historical or ecological point of interest and road stop attraction in the continental United States.

But Dean was flushed up to the ears and missing the natural bravado that usually let him talk his way out of trouble. He squirmed in his seat, his far-side hand out of sight and probably hovering over his concealed carry holster. It had been a long couple of weeks and they were both feeling a bit edgy. There probably wasn't a worse time to get cornered like this. Sam tried to shoot him a look reminding him to play it cool.

But Dean was better at handling awkward situations when he was the cause of them, not the focus.

"Dude, don't know shit and don't give a shit," Dean replied gruffly. If Dean was going for the best stereotypical impersonation of a block-head tough-guy, then he was doing a fantastic job. He was also failing spectacularly at not pissing off the Fed.

But his belligerent response seemed to have the opposite effect from what Sam had expected. Instead of being offended, the Fed just smiled even more inanely and leaned in over their table. "Sure, it's not to everyone's taste. Some people find Sparkle's Scandalous Stage more fitting, but Dana's a classy girl and I could never take her to a place like that. Macombo Lounge maybe, but never Sparkle's."

That was all far more than Sam wanted to know about the local sleaze scene. But damned if Dean didn't perk up a little. He normally had the good sense to stay away from places like that. A bit too rich for their blood. And while Sam liked to think that _generally_ Dean was better than that, he was also too well aware of how easily his brother could get distracted.

Sam wasn't the only one to notice his perv of a brother's interest. The Fed grinned smugly – _then sat down._

Which, alright, wasn't as simple as it sounded. The guy had to do this little half shove, half wiggle to squeeze himself in beside Dean and it probably only worked because it seriously looked like the guy was going to just sit on Dean's lap if he didn't make room for him. All of which might have been entertaining under other circumstances. You know, the kinds that didn't involve a Fed rubbing elbows with his brother. His - very much supposed to be dead, wanted for multiple accounts of murder and bank robbing - brother.

"My name's Fox," the guy said, twisting around to hold his hand out to Dean.

Dean stared at the hand, then stared at the absentminded grin that went with it, and then stared at Sam like he was supposed to know what the hell was going on. Sam made shooing motions that he hoped expressed his strong urge to play along. No one was getting arrested yet, which was always a good sign.

"Steve Tyler," Dean replied, taking the hand with obvious reluctance but shaking it firmly. The name came out effortlessly. It was what their most recent credit card said and one they had been using for the past two weeks. They tried to keep consistent if they were still in the same area. They had learned the hard way that it drew more attention to change names in small towns. But that also meant that those same credit cards were getting ditched as fast as humanly possible after this little tête-à-tête.

"Really?" the guy replied brightly, like it was the best thing he'd heard all day. "Any relation?"

"Huh?"

"To the famous singer."

"What?" Dean looked like he'd just bit into a lemon pie when he had expected apple. Like he thought he could really get away with using his favorite band names forever and not get caught. "No, look, dude, do you mind? We're trying to eat in peace here." Though both of them were more than finished at this point. If they could get the Fed to back off for a moment, even just the smallest bit of hesitation or doubt, they could hotfoot it out of here.

But the guy didn't look put off at all. "Sure, sure," he agreed amiably. "Got to get in a healthy breakfast in between bank robberies and being dead. How's that working out for you by the way?"

Sam's right was to the window, which made it easy to slip his gun out and hold it out of sight. He couldn't see under the table, but he was fairly certain that Dean would have noticed if the Fed had his own piece out. "I think we're done talking," Sam gritted out, keeping his face blank and hoping the guy's partner was far enough across the room to have no clue what was going down. It was odd that they hadn't come over together and it made the hair on the back of Sam's neck standing up, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"But we just met!" The guy replied, finally turning to face Sam. He leaned forward a little over the table, as if he knew that Sam had a gun on him and was daring him to pull the trigger. It was way too cocky for someone who didn't have a backup plan and Sam was not looking forward to finding out what that was.

"Sorry, buddy, you're not our type," Dean quipped, suddenly all smug smiles again. His own body shifted around slightly, going for his left which meant the knife. Better in close quarters.

The man's eyes widened in an exaggerated expression. "I would love to see what your type is like. I've heard you boys like them dead and rotting in their graves, but I guess to each his own. I'm more interested in knowing how Dean here's so well preserved for a man who died 2 years ago. And what really happened in at that police station in Monument, Colorado."

"Read the police report," Dean snapped back. He didn't like talking about what happened to Henrickson.

"Oh, I have! In fact, I have a few questions about how - "

"Don't care," Dean cut him off sharply, with what looked like an extra poke to make his point. "You're going to get up and sit in the booth behind you, facing away from the door. You turn around, Sammy here blows your head off. You try to warn your partner, and Sammy shoots you, then her. And if anybody else gets shot on the way out, that's on you. We clear?"

The Fed held his hands up mildly. "I can't guarantee what Dana will and will not do, you know. She's very dedicated. And one hell of a good shot."

"Not better than my brother," Dean replied without hesitation. And yeah, they were bluffing like mad but nobody bluffed better than Sam's brother. He'd had a lifetime of talking his way out of hell and back.

"I'd really like to hear your version of the event," the man replied, voice calm and eyes fixed on Dean even though Sam was the one with the gun.

"Nothing to hear," Dean grumbled. He poked the guy again, enough to get him scooting slowly out of the booth.

"Funny, that's not what most guilty men say." The man stood up slowly, but didn't move away enough to give Dean room to stand. Sam stayed in his seat, gun now cross body and too low to be fatal but he didn't actually plan on shooting anyone. "I'm going to pull a card out of my pocket," the Fed continued. "How about you not shoot me, okay?" He didn't wait for any kind of confirmation.

And it was one of those moments when Sam almost felt like he and his brother were operating with one mind, both so focused on the very real here and now that it was as if nothing else mattered. The Fed was either lying and calling their bluff, in which case they were screwed, or he really was just pulling a business card out of his pocket.

"That's my office and my personal number," the guy said, holding it out in front of Dean's face almost close enough to give him a paper cut. "You're right. I'm not going to try arresting you here in a diner. Not when I'm not the one with the gun. But I do actually really want to hear your story. I'm probably the only law enforcement officer who does. Take it. And when you boys feel like talking about what happened to you, I'd be happy to listen."

Dean snatched it out of the guy's hand and shoved it in his pocket. "Dude, really?" Dean barked out, exasperated and embarrassed all at once. He scrambled out of the booth, knife tucked away, and shoved the Fed over – all without getting between Sam and his target. The Fed took it mildly, flopping down in the next booth and keeping his hands were they could see them. Sam kind of wanted to tell him he should have saved his breath. Trying to appeal to Dean's emotions to talk about things was like trying to convince a Windigo that maybe it should take up veganism.

"Come on, Sammy," Dean muttered already halfway to the door.

Sam kept the gun tucked up close to him as he stood, but didn't actually put it away. At this point, someone catching an eyeful wasn't going to make this any worse than it already was. He moved slowly to follow his brother. The Fed stayed in his booth, but he had turned around to lean on the back of it, watching them curiously. His disappointment at them leaving was more like a kid being denied another bedtime story than a Federal Agent watching a wanted criminal walk away.

Dean was at the door and picking up speed. Sam turned around to catch up and nearly collided with the guy's partner. She was a good foot shorter than him, wrapped up in a voluminous wool coat that made her look even smaller. But she was eyeing him hard. Looking for something but clearly not quite catching it yet. Sam's face wasn't as well circulated as his brother's and the fact that she wasn't trying to arrest him meant she hadn't made the connection like her partner. But she looked like she was only a couple of steps behind.

"Sorry, excuse me, bye!" Sam blurted and gave up on all pretense of calm and controlled and darted after his brother. Dean had the Impala already running and Sam slid around to the passenger seat barely fast enough to avoid getting hit or worse left behind. They peeled out of the parking lot hard enough to fishtail the back end. Sam managed one last look as he twisted around in his seat. The woman was just now running out of the front door, gun in hand and a look on her face that didn't bode well for anyone. The guy, Fox, was still in his booth, face pressed up against the window, still looking like a kid who'd just had a toy taken away.

"Fuckin' Feds," Dean exclaimed with feeling and Sam had to agree. That was far too close for comfort. What were the chances of running into one of the few feds that could recognize Dean on sight?

Thank god they'd never see them again.


	3. Chapter 3

"You wanna repeat that, boy?" Bobby's voice growled out through the sad tiny speaker of Dean's burner phone.

"Look, it's not our fault!" Dean insisted, immediately on the defensive. It didn't end well to let Bobby get going on that kind of train of thought. The guy would always be there to give the brothers a hand. He'd proven that time and time again. Even at their darkest. But that didn't mean he'd do so without ripping them a new one, and that could take far longer than Dean wanted to spend on the phone. They had driven straight through the day and all night, trying to put as much distance between them and the Feds as they could. Since they didn't have a next job lined up, it didn't hurt to put a bit of space – say half the continent – between them and Virginia. "How the hell could we have known a couple of Feds would be slumming it in a place like that? I don't think that place even took credit cards."

"You idjits could find trouble with both hands tied behind your back and blindfolded. In fact, I'm pretty sure ya've done so. I've givin' up on tryin' to keep your fool asses out of the fire long ago."

"Don't say that, Bobby," Sam tried interjecting. He had that earnest tone of voice that had worked so well when he was sixteen, skinny and tall, coltish and awkward, and hard not to take pity on. It wasn't as effective on Bobby these years, but you had to give the guy credit for trying. "You know we don't mean to cause trouble."

"And yet ya do it so damn well. Jesus Christ, boys. Fox Fucking Mulder."

Dean stopped unpacking, his toiletries in one hand and his gun cleaning kit in the other. "Why does that sound like you know who the fuck this fucking Fed is?" He put both items back in his duffel. "Bobby. What the hell now?"

"I'm not the dumb idjit that got mixed up with the one Fed you should stay away from," Bobby snapped back.

"Wait, I'm confused," Sammy interjected. He'd moved from his side of the room and came to stand by Dean and the phone. "The guy didn't seem that threatening. Hell, he barely put up a fight when Dean and I got the hell out of there."

"Shouldn't have been talkin' to him in the first place."

"Bobby," Dean huffed with almost a laugh. "It's not exactly like we went out to make friends."

"Fox Fucking Mulder," Bobby repeated like it was the end of the world. Which was damn funny since it might sort of be, the way their lives were going. They had seals and demons and moody freakin' angels to deal with and Bobby was all bent out of shape about a goofy looking Fed.

Sam reached out and snagged the business card from where Dean had dropped it. Dean had shoved it into his pocket more out of impulse than anything else and forgot about it until they had finally pulled off of the road. It looked like every other Fed's business card. They had mocked up a few of them over the years and had a pretty good idea of what kind of formatting to use and what the seal should look like. The only odd thing about this one was the personal phone scrawled on the back in messy handwriting. It had been like that when the guy pulled it out, so either he prepared it just before talking to them or he was in the habit of giving random contacts his personal information. Dean wasn't sure which was weirder.

"Nothing here that stands out, Bobby," Sam commented. "You wanna tell us what has your knickers in a bunch? Is he someone important? Possessed?"

"Christ, just what we need," Dean muttered. Fucking demons. A fucking Fed that was a fucking demon would just be too fuckin' much.

"Worse," Bobby groaned. "He's a believer."

Dean blinked down at the phone as if it would communicate more information than that. "What do you mean? Like, an angel possession kind of believer?"

"Not to my knowledge," Bobby admitted, which was good enough for Dean. "He's been popping up for a few years now. On o-ffic-cial in-vesty-ga-tions," he said, mockingly drawing the two words out. "Which is about the damn most dangerous thing for us hunters. Last goddamn thing we need is some dumbass Fed thinkin' he knows a damn thing about what's really happenin' out here."

Dean snatched up the phone and held it in front of his face. "You mean to say this guy actually knows something? For real?"

"I don't know that. You think I can read minds now, boy? But I can tell you he's been asking some damn pointed questions and stickin' his nose in case after case. I've had to warn more than one hunter off a case because of him. Which makes the job a damn clusterfuck instead of lettin' a professional deal with the problem."

Dean's fists clenched. "You mean to tell me we've got a certified government official who _knows_ what the hell we're up against and we're not taking advantage of that? What the hell, Bobby."

" _I_ don't _know_ what he knows and what he doesn't know. And what the hell do you expect one of us to do? Tell him who we really are and hope he's actually got his head out of his ass and doesn't throw whatever poor fuck in jail or the nut house?"

"But Bobby," Sam said, eyes lighting up. "Think about the possibilities. The resources we could have."

"Now you listen here, you two numbnuts." And fuck but that was Bobby's really angry voice. He usually reserved that for when one of them did something really spectacular, like taking up with demons or volunteering for suicide runs. "I don't even wanna hear about either one of ya getting it into your damn fool head to even go near this guy. He is a walkin', talkin, disaster waiting to happen. And the last thing you boys need is to be getting dragged into his mess. Let him figure this shit out on his own. The rest of us had to. Even _if_ he could help us, it'd be a onetime thing and it'd likely get us all into boilin' hot water."

"Still," Sammy reasoned. "It might be good to know it's an option."

"Boy, don't make me come find you and beat some sense into your ass."

A Fed who knew what the hell they were up against. It was hard to picture. Sure, Henrickson finally came around there at the last moment, but it had taken a hell of a lot of blood and in the end it had gotten him killed. Was it worth it? Pulling someone else into this fucked up mess was never something Dean wanted to do, but he had to admit the temptation was there.

But this wasn't somebody who had survived a ghost hunting trip with him. Or helped fight off a demon. Or bled beside him in any way. And Dean had had it beat into his head, by both Dad and Bobby, who you could and couldn't trust. And Bobby was right. They didn't _know_ anything about this guy, other than he was some kind of odd ball who might actually have a clue. That didn't make him a hunter and that didn't make him someone Dean could trust. Not now with everything that was going on with Sammy.

Oh, and that whole apocalypse thing.

"Right," Dean announced. "No Feds. No stupid guy named Fox. I mean, really. Who names their kid that? No one that can be trusted to have two brain cells."

"But - "

"No buts, Sammy. We'll call ya later, Bobby," Dean said before hanging up the phone and pulling his kits back out.

Sammy sighed mournfully, like the overgrown girl he was. But he went back to his side of the room and started working on his own gear. "Just would've been nice to be on the right side of the law for once," he grumbled.

"Dude. You wanted to be a _lawyer_. That's about as crooked as it gets." Which was true, no matter how much Sam sputtered and objected and cited shit at him. The right side of the law was about as far of a distant dream for them as spending a night at the playboy mansion. After all, a fancy education and all the resources in the world didn't mean jack shit against the truth of what was really out there. They didn't need anybody else's help.

* * *

"Meet Dean and Sam Winchester!" Mulder announced as he dropped a thick file in Scully's lap. She caught it awkwardly and shifted her coffee out of her hand to better hold it. Even without opening it she could see the edges of newspaper clippings sticking out of the bottom, and she sighed. It was going to be that kind of case. The type that relied more on tabloids than reports. At least Mulder seemed much more chipper than he had during the rest of their ride home from the diner. He had sulked the entire way – which wasn't unusual after one of their cases since so many failed to have the outcome he would have preferred. Scully was accustomed to dealing with it, but he had kept interrupting the NPR broadcast she had been trying to listen to with his complaints and it had left both of them somewhat grumpy by the end.

Right now he was perched on the edge of his desk, staring down at her expectantly with a boyish grin on his face.

Scully sighed again and started on the heavy file. She was going to have quite a bit of reading to do since it was clear Mulder found all of this very relevant. The beginning at least had some sense of order. Both young men were pictured in what were clearly prison mug shots. The one was all bravado, the other more subdued - almost frustrated. Like being arrested was an inconvenience. The pictures looked a few years old based on her own observations of the suspects. It was somewhat disconcerting that they both looked more clean-cut, well rested and relaxed in their prison photos than they had on a lazy Sunday morning waiting for breakfast.

"And yet you let them walk away, Mulder," she grossed, annoyed with herself as well for not detaining the man as soon as she saw him. There had been something distinctly guilty about him and she should have known to trust her own instincts better and ignore Mulder's carelessness.

"They did have a gun, Scully." He said it with a shrug and a condescending attitude that if it had been coming from anyone else she might have taken it personally, but for Mulder it was standard for him talking to anyone who wasn't also a believer.

"So did you, Mulder," she pointed out, matching his tone.

He grinned brightly back at her. "Yes, but somehow I don't think that would have been enough. You ought to read this one, Scully. I mean, I doubt it's even half of what's happened, but it's certainly interesting enough as it is."

She flipped through some of the early biographical data, reading carefully the hand written notes Mulder had added in the margins. Mulder's theories frequently included the highly unorthodox, but he was still one of the best profilers in the agency. He could make some of the most detailed and inspired analysis of human behavior – assuming you could get him to focus on the most probable explanation and not on proving the most improbable. Scully was learning to sift through the more extreme elements to find the practical aspects – but she was also learning how and when to follow him down that rabbit hole.

"Orphans," she noted. "I assume the mother's death was investigated."

"Not at first," Mulder replied. "Not beyond the basics. There was no clear evidence of foul play and no record of any irregularities with the family." She glanced up at him and he shrugged. "Child services got involved a few months after the event. Neglect only. But the father skipped town with the two boys before there could be any follow up. No other immediate family, and since nothing could be determined, the case was dropped."

She raised an eyebrow.

Mulder shrugged. "Nothing to suggest abuse," he answered. "There's several confirmed records of the boys being put into school, and Samuel Winchester even attended Stanford for a time, under his real name. Right up until his girlfriend died in a fire at their apartment."

Scully's expression didn't change. "What a coincidence. Familial disorder?" she asked innocently. She couldn't hide her interest however. The study of genetic mental disease was an ever changing field filled with a variety of opposing and competing theories. Very little could be proven however, since psychotic homicidal families were thankfully a rare commodity.

Mulder matched her expression with one of his own. "Depends on what you mean by coincidence. And what you mean by disorder."

Scully skipped forward to some of the more eye-catching articles and skimmed their contents. It didn't take much. "Multiple petty crimes," she noted dismissively before raising her voice. "Grave desecration?" What a lovely hobby. She squinted at the next photo. "Are those satanic symbols?" she asked, her tone one of pure professional curiosity as she continued reading quickly. "Mulder. They've killed people. Gruesomely."

"Allegedly!"

"Three people in Missouri," she replied before flipping ahead. She stopped suddenly. "Homicide and bank robbery," she hissed. "The Milwaukee bank robbery!" Everyone in the agency heard about that one. Violent, unusual murders always made the news and had the agents making bets on if this was the debut of a new serial killer.

Mulder held up his hands in what was meant to look disarming but Scully was more than familiar enough with to see through. "You'll also note that Dean Winchester has been confirmed dead. Twice. That we have on record. There's a lot of things in the record that don't add up, Scully. Dean Winchester's repetitive disappearing acts in only part of it."

"And your theory?" Scully asked, because Mulder always had a theory. "On who the primary is?" she clarified, trying to keep the conversation on track.

Her tone was a bit sharp, but Mulder grinned back even more broadly, not at all offended. "That, Scully, may be the million dollar question. The father is clearly the first, but there's a clear shift in structure and visibility when Samuel goes to college."

"You think he's the catalyst?"

"I think the violence picked up when Samuel rejoined his brother."

"That's one way to describe it," Scully agreed. "These are very serious allegations, Mulder."

"I know that. You think I don't? That's why this matter, Scully. Something weird is going on with these two brothers."

"Something beyond homicidal tendencies? Mulder, you've read this file. Their childhood is like a textbook case of psychotic risk factors."

Mulder grinned. "I meet some of those risk factors."

"Yes, but you don't have a trail of dead bodies following you."

"Sure I do," Mulder replied losing the grin. "We've had more than our fair share of case related fatalities, Scully." He held up his hand to forestall any argument. "And if it was just that, I'd say you might be right. But just too many inconsistencies, Scully. Too many unaccounted for things. Weird follows these two like nothing else I've ever seen. Doesn't that make you curious?"

"Curious on how to catch them, yes."

Mulder grinned again. "No argument there. But what if it's something bigger than just the two of them? Something that won't stop just by catching them? Or something that might get away with all of those deaths if we do? Do you want to take that chance?"

"There's always that chance, Mulder," she reminded him. It was the limitation of their work, their real work as investigators. She stared at one of the more bizarre reports involving the deaths of three people at three different sites all at the same time. Scully understood the limitations of the legal system but she also had great faith in its ability to do more good than harm. She wouldn't have worked so hard for her place in the FBI if she didn't. Still. She trusted Mulder. "What are you expecting to find?" she asked slowly, looking at the reports and wondering.

Mulder shrugged carelessly. "I don't know. Exciting, isn't it?"

Scully smiled back. She couldn't help it. Her life certainly was never boring. "But Mulder, we missed the arrest. We have nothing." Unless he was holding back some harebrained brilliant plan.

Judging by the way his shoulders slumped, she assumed not. She almost regretted having to remind him. "I know," he sighed. "It's like seeing Bigfoot and not having a camera." He pushed himself off of the desk and moved to slump in his seat. "We'll probably never get another chance like that again."


	4. Chapter 4

Three months later

"FBI you say?" the deputy asked. He was still looking at Dean and Sam's badges, which identified them as Harrison Hamill and Mark Ford. The crime scene was marked off with enough tape to go around the entire state park twice, which was more than enough for the shallow ditch and its small bridge that made up the crime scene. Local law enforcement was out in mass, along with the park rangers and freakishly enough what looked like the CDC. Sam and Dean didn't like to overwork the FBI angle, but with this many civil servants running around, the FBI was about the only thing that was guaranteed to pull rank.

But the deputy didn't look that impressed. He didn't look defensive either. He just looked bored. Like dismembered, partially gnawed on bodies were an everyday thing for him. Though who knew, maybe that was the kind of problem places named Chester had.

"Do you mind?" Dean asked in his best snotty, you-are-lower-than-dirt-to-me voice. It didn't take a lot of effort to fake.

The deputy shrugged and handed their badges back. "Whatever. The other two are down there, looking at some weird leaves or something like that."

Dean and Sam shared one quick look. It was possibly other hunters. They weren't the only ones in the business to play this trick. But most of them worked through Bobby as their 'confirmation' and Bobby was the one who had sent the brother's out here in the first place. "Other two?" Sam asked politely.

"Moldy and Skully, or something like that."

"What the fuck!" Dean exclaimed.

It echoed through the deep greenery of the forest.

The deputy's eyes went wide and his mouth dropped open. Sam grabbed his brother's shoulder and hauled him back so hard he was in danger of dislocating something. "Excuse us!" he called back cheerfully as he got them the fuck out of there.

* * *

Two weeks after that

They were halfway across Tennessee when the phone rang. It was Dean's personal phone and not one of the burners, which narrowed down the possibilities to about one. Which was just more proof for how sad their lives really were. Dean fished it out with one hand, making Sam wince as they made their way around the curves of a back country road.

"Talk," Dean declared. They were coming off of another failed attempt to put a hold on this whole starting the apocalypse thing and Dean was angry at just about everything. Demons, humans and angels alike. What they needed was a little bit of friendly help. Maybe a nice easy job. Just enough to remind them why they were fighting this in the first place. So Bobby had already found them what sounded like a skinshifter. Which also said something about their lives these days that Sam ranked that kind of monster as easy. But there must be more to the case if Bobby was calling back.

Dean had the phone up to his ear, so Sam didn't hear half of the conversation, but Dean's side was easy enough to understand. He slammed on the brakes hard enough to make the seatbelts lock. "Goddamn, fuckin' fuckity shit bag!" he shouted.

Sam had himself braced in place and had a few choice words of his own he'd like to add.

"How the hell did that happen?" Dean demanded and Sammy's heart sank a little further. There were a lot of bad things that could happen these days. He didn't really want to start listing them in his head, but he couldn't help it.

"Well, how the hell did he even find out about this?" Dean argued. The car was at a complete stop, sitting in the middle of a blind curve and Dean didn't seem to care at all. "What do you mean you don't know? I thought this guy was supposed to be clueless? How the hell is he getting there before us?" Bobby must have said something insightful because Dean switched to cussing him out instead.

He disconnected the call with as much force as a grown man could when using a cell phone. He jerked the car to the side, then shifted gears to do a three point turn.

"No hunt?" Sam asked carefully.

"Goddamn fucking Feds!"

* * *

A week after that

"I cannot believe this shit!" Dean snarled as he yanked the suit jacket off and flung it across their small hotel room.

Sam followed him in more slowly but with the same feeling of frustration. He shut the door and threw all of the locks before collapsing in the room's one chair. The beachside town they were in had lovely views, tasty soft-shelled crabs and expensive tourist hotels. Even the little out-of-the-way joint they'd found still charged like the ritz and this tiny, tight little room with its cheerful seventies-pastel walls and scratchy-as-sand towels was all the boys could afford on their current budget. Guarding seals had taking up much more of their time these days than normal hunting did, and the cash funds were habitually low. But they didn't really have a choice. One of the seals was here and so the Winchester boys were too.

"I mean really? What the fuck!" Dean continued, not looking for an actual answer. "Who the hell are these bastards? What, did the spook put a damn tracking device on us? I swear to god, if one of them touched my baby…"

"The Feds got here before us," Sam supplied helpfully.

"What the fuck?" Dean replied, ignoring Sam's logical input and sticking to his old favorite refrain. "We only found out about this one through Cas."

Sam slouched in his chair, staring up at the popcorn ceiling. "It is kind of impressive."

Dean continued stripping, throwing clothing left and right in a way he normally wouldn't with one of his suits. Regular clothes, sure. Sam was forever finding socks in odd places and tripping over t-shirts. But their suits were another tool and one they couldn't easily replace. Dean usually carefully folded his away with the same care he showed any of his pistols. At least, he did when he wasn't having a temper tantrum.

"It's a goddamn problem we've gotta fix," Dean muttered darkly.

Sam lifted his head and leveled a glare in his direction. "Can we not screw with the FBI again? That didn't end well for anyone last time. Jail time is seriously going to hinder stopping the apocalypse."

"Yeah, well, don't be an idjit and get caught."

Sam sat up. "Dean, I'm serious. Whatever you're thinking, no."

Dean huffed. "How the hell can you know what I'm thinking? I don't even know what I'm thinking."

Sam raised one eyebrow.

"Shut up."

Sam did, only because he thought that was the end of the conversation. With the FBI running all over their hunt, there wasn't a lot of options except for them to back off. If they got lucky, the Feds would cause enough disturbance to foil whatever the demons had planned. It was the best they could hope for at this point. There were still other seals. Sure, this one had been promising, but they'd manage. They'd have to. They didn't have any other choice.

Or at least, that's what Sam understood. Dean apparently missed those little details.

"Dean."

"I'm thinking."

"Not reassuring, Dean."

"Look, we can't work the job while these FBI guys are here, right?"

Sam closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "I'm afraid to ask."

Dean was already moving. He had his bag out and was yanking on street clothes as fast as he could. He tossed an extra t-shirt at Sam. "Don't be such a drama queen. I've got this."

"Still scared."

"There was a drug store up the street, right?"

Sam scrambled to his feet. "Getting more scared!"

"Relax, Samantha," Dean replied, flash his best shit-eating grin over his shoulder. "Remember Alex Park?"

Sam paused, his hands wringing nervously at the t-shirt. It's not that he thought his brother would do something immoral, it was just - things had been a bit weird lately. What with Dean going to hell and Sam's little blood drinking problem - basically neither of them were probably making very good life choices these days. "Who?"

"Alabama. Your first year of high school. Remember that dickwad?"

There had been quite a few dickwads at different schools over the years. Sometimes the dickwad _was_ Dean. More often it was Dean getting some jerk to lay off of Sam, at least before Sam's growth spurt hit. And while Sam didn't really remember most of them - hard to make a lasting impression on a kid who dealt with monsters on a daily basis – he _did_ remember Alex. The kid had had a streak of mean that made the hair on the back of Sam's neck stand up. He'd mostly left Sam alone after the time he saw the knife Dean and Dad insisted Sam take with him everywhere. Apparently despite being a grade-A asshole, the guy had had some self-preservation instincts. That didn't stop him from terrorizing most of the other kids at school. Dean hadn't even been bothering to enroll at that point, but even he heard about some of the nastier pranks and abuse.

"What about him?" Sam asked, trying to work out the connection between an over-compensating school bully and the very real threat of the two hovering FBI agents. Sure, they were annoying, but mostly because they were actually doing a fairly good job of investigating the crazy shit that the Winchesters were used to dealing with on their own.

"I'm thinking we've been missing a very simple solution to this problem," Dean announced proudly. "Sure, it'll probably only work one time, but we need this win and I ain't willing to leave it to dumb and dumber."

Sam scowled. "Name calling, really?"

"Yes, really, Samantha. Now put on your big girl panties and let's go buy some laxatives."

Sam's eyes widened. "You wouldn't."

"The hell I wouldn't. Getting between me and a hunt," Dean muttered. "Worked well enough on Alex-the-douche didn't it? Now let's go put a couple of FBI agents out of commission for the night and take care of real business."

"Oh my god."

"Stop whining. It's brilliant."

"We're drugging FBI agents."

"Only a little bit."

"I hate you so much sometimes."

* * *

Soon after

"You need to go to Owls Head"

"Jesus H. Christ on a cracker!" Dean screamed, jerking back and flailing one arm out in what he would swear was a defensive maneuver and not just him freaking out. Though in his defense, Cas the angel had just freakin' materialized outta thin air behind him in the men's restroom of a Biggersons in Gatlinburg.

Castiel frowned. "Why would my father's son be on a cracker?" he asked. And yeah, the robot routine was kind of annoying and he still wasn't sure why he was the one who had to do all of the angel communicating when Sam was much more enthusiastic about the idea. But Dean had to admit, Cas and his stupid ass literal questions were kind of part of why he sort of liked the weird-o a bit more than his creepy, foul tempered brethren. Sure, Cas could do the I-will-smite-you routine with the best of them, but at least the guy listened when Dean talked. He wouldn't ask stupid questions otherwise.

"Wait, what?" Dean managed to ask after shaking himself off and getting everything tucked back away and not hanging out while they had this conversation. "An owl's head? God, I don't want to fucking know, do I?"

Cas frowned. It varied from his normal face by adding more lines to the already pissed off expression. "This is important work, Dean Winchester."

Dean cut him off before he could get started on _that_ rant. "Right, got it. We talking a seal here? And please don't tell me I have to find a particular owl."

Cas's face didn't change much, but Dean was familiar with the look people got when they wanted to punch him. "What do you need an owl for?" Cas demanded.

Which really, what the hell? "Um, you just said something about an owl head."

"Owls Head. New York. In the mountainous northern region of eastern United States of America."

"Oh. Right," Dean drawled. "Why didn't you just say so?"

"I did."

Dean smirked back, ignoring his own confusion and enjoying the game of try-to-make-the-angel-lose-his-temper. Which, okay, maybe not the smartest thing he'd ever done, but Cas was just too tempting. "So. What's going down in good old upstate New York? It's been a while since we passed through that part."

It wasn't a complicated question, but Cas didn't answer right away. He kept staring at Dean like he expected Dean to automatically know. Or maybe not so much expected, as wanted. Which, okay, he and the angel were not developing some kind of telepathic bond. Nope, no siree. Dean's life was weird enough already. And why Cas couldn't just come out and say things was frustrating. Especially since Dean had a feeling this had to do with some shady angel business. And honestly, those guys were getting more dubious each time they crossed paths.

The door banged open, a heavy-set man in a red polo and wrinkled, stained khakis stood outlined in the doorway. He stopped as soon as he saw Dean and Castiel and stared. Then he took one step backwards and let the door shut between them.

"Guess he didn't really need to piss," Dean quipped. It fell a bit flat, however, since Cas gave no indication of even noticing that they'd had company or that they'd freaked out said guest.

"You must leave immediately," Cas announced.

"I thought I might wash my hands first," Dean countered, just to be a little shit. Being a smartass was a natural state for him, but there was also something about Cas that brought it out in full force. Like poking something with a stick, he just couldn't resist.

Cas unbent enough to step to the side, though his body language all but screamed 'well? hurry up with it!'.

Dean bumped into him as he walked by before making a long production out of getting his hand clean. Hell, he could spend a good hour just rubbing at oil stains and still claim they weren't clean yet. "So what's in Owls Head? And who the hell names a place that."

"It is named after a local rock formation, by a man called Lauren Jameson who built himself a habitation on the site in 1822. He was an avid ornithologist. You must go there immediately and prevent its destruction."

"Well, that escalated quickly," Dean commented. But he dried his hands and turned all of his attention to his own personal messenger. "What's happening there?"

"Demons."

Dean waited a moment and when nothing else came forth groaned. "Come on, dude. You got to give me a little more than that. What are we getting into? Sam and I can't burn demons out the way you can. We gotta plan ahead. And for that matter, why aren't you and the rest of the feather brigade taking care of this one?"

"Angels cannot interfere in this matter."

"Okay. How come?"

"We cannot interfere."

"Can't or won't?" Dean demanded. Goddamn them and using him and his brother as their whipping boys. Sure, Dean maybe owed the guy one or a lifetime's worth of favors, but Sammy didn't and Dean didn't like dragging him into this shit.

Cas frowned some more then _muttered_ , "Can't."

Dean squinted at him. "Legit can't? Not just it's not part of our programing?"

Cas huffed. "There is something preventing us from entering the area or from receiving a clear picture of what is happening. We just know there is a large concentration of demonic energy there and we have reason to believe it maybe relate to a seal."

Dean groaned. Okay, he couldn't really ignore something like that. Anything big enough to stump the angels was likely to kick their asses too, but was also something big enough that they couldn't just ignore it. "That's all you got?" he asked, already feeling a little desperate.

Castiel went back to frowning, any hint of hesitation or embarrassment erased as if it never existed. "Need I remind you that you and your brother are the start of all of this. We have given you the information you need to do something about fixing this. I suggest you leave immediately."

Dean scowled. "Fine. Got the message. You know, just when I'm starting to think you're - You know what? Nevermind." He pushed passed Cas once more. "Wouldn't want to inconvenience ya or anything. Wouldn't expect any different."

"Dean Winchester."

"What?" Dean snapped back, pausing at the door of the stupid Biggersons restroom. What the hell was his life anyway? Conversations with angels in the damn john.

"Be careful. Whatever this is, the truth of it will be hidden."

Which almost, sort of, sounded like he maybe gave a crap. And how pathetic was Dean for responding to that? "Yeah, sure. Whatever. Sam and I are good at finding the truth, then ganking its ass. Don't worry, Cas. We won't let anybody stop us."


	5. Chapter 5

"Scully!" Mulder shouted, his voice booming in the sparely filled space.

"Not now, Mulder," she replied, her voice equally clear if not as loud. She was much more focused on the delicate task at hand than whatever insanity he had come up with.

"Yes, now!"

"I'm a little bit busy now, Mulder."

There was a slight delay, a moment's hesitation as that idea was thought over. "So?"

Scully carefully set down the surgical tools in her hands. "Mulder," she said very calmly. "What exactly do you think I'm doing?"

Her tone must have been clear because Mulder's restless, impatient, constant movement stopped and he stared at her. "Work," he agreed, without looking at it or the rest of the lab that he had so loudly invaded. "But this is also work!" he rallied, holding up the thin unmarked file in his hand. "More important work!"

Scully took a deep breath without thinking and the burn of chemical smell just barely blocked out the general stench of decay in the room. "Correct me if I am wrong, Mulder, but is there the remains of a bloody, filleted, dismembered body physically hidden in that file? Because I have a bloody, skinned forearm sitting on my table and it is only one piece of the mess Jack pulled out of the Occoquan yesterday. The entire department, including me, is literally up to their elbows in body parts." And thankfully, the rest of them in the lab were still busy enough to go back to their work and ignore the latest little outburst by their residential spook.

"But that's not _your_ work."

"Mulder, this is possibly the biggest serial murder case of our generation. Of course they're going to call in every qualified specialist available."

"But you're not available! You're my expert!"

She raised one eyebrow, staring out at him through her protective gear. She held her tongue and gave him a chance to consider his next words carefully. Very carefully.

"Not that whatever it is you are doing with people's forearms isn't very important," he said quickly. But then he grinned boyishly and leaned in to continue in that faux-whisper he used when he was about to start trouble. "But come on, Scully. Are you telling me that there's one other person in this whole building that could handle the kind of crazy we deal with? They'd go running at the first alien spore or dog-boy."

She was smiling. "Mulder, hypertichosis is a chronic condition that can be controlled."

He held up his file again, careful not to let it accidently brush up against anything on her table. "This is far more interesting," he promised.

They stared at each other, Mulder grinning and Scully trying to look stern. "You've got 10 minutes to convince me, Mulder, that your case is more interesting than the Ripper."

"Missing person, found dead this morning," he announced proudly.

"Unfortunate, but not exactly unique," she replied, playing along.

"He went missing three days ago. Left for a lunch break one day and didn't come back. Police found him at a gas station three blocks from his house, over 24 hours after the last time anyone saw him. He had no memories of where he had been or what he had been doing. This morning he never made it into work. A couple of school kids found him near their house within an hour."

It wasn't lunch yet, and Mulder already had the print-outs for her. "You were tracking the case that closely?"

Mulder grinned broadly. "Nope. But I do pay attention when a body shows up looking like this," he announced before whipping out a photo and holding it up for her to see in the harsh light of the lab.

"Oh," she replied.

"Oh," he repeated. "So. How quickly can you be ready to go?"

She tore her eyes away from the picture to look at her old work. "Give me an hour."

* * *

"Wow, Dean announced. "I mean, that's impressive."

"Not appropriate," Sam muttered. He was crouched down examining the body. Cas had given them specific coordinates for what was apparently an angel blind spot, but beyond that he had given them very little to work with.

Owls Head was barely a town, and even then much of it was broken up by the ebbs and follows of the mountain it was perched on. Dean had not enjoyed the drive up. Tire chains had barely made a difference getting through the early spring snow. There was a reason they tended to avoid the north in the winter, and this far up, it was still dangerously icy despite being March already. The Impala was not designed for these kinds of conditions and Dean bitched the entire time about what the salt was doing to his paint job.

They'd found a place to stay and had gotten to work on figuring out what was so important Cas would come to them and not the other way around. There hadn't been much. A few local legends, the kind of stuff typical of small mountain towns, possibly a case back in the 1930s, but no sign of it starting up again. The only oddity they had been able to find was a missing person's case that had been resolved a couple of days before. Nothing to suggest the kind of demonic activity strong enough to block the entire angel radar. When Dean hadn't been griping about the effects of the weather conditions on his car, he'd been whining about how in the hell they were supposed to fix things if they didn't even know what the problem was.

Sam guessed this was another case of being careful what you wished for.

Bill Haymond had been found dead in a field twenty minutes from his house, and good hour's drive from his workplace. He was completely naked and covered in slash marks.

The kids who had found him had been on their way to school at the time. Sam doubted they'd ever recover from it.

Even Sam felt a little shaky. It was only a couple of hours ago that he and Dean had stopped by the man's house. Bill and Liz Haymond lived in a new build just outside of town. Nice house, good reliable midrange car, no kids but just about everything else middle America. The wife worked part-time at a real estate firm and Mr. Haymond was one of the local reps selling parts and hardware to farms in the area.

He had gone missing sometime during lunch three days ago. A friend called the wife when he didn't make it back in, the wife called the police. Just as they were finally beginning to move on it, Mr. Haymond was found in daze at the gas station by his house. He had no memories of the last 24 hours. There wasn't much in the official report to explain why the matter wasn't followed up on. He was reported as being in good health, with no sign of foul play, and the issue was officially closed even if the gossips still had a field day discussing a missing married man.

It certainly hadn't been a lot to go on, but as the only lead Dean and Sam had of anything odd happening in the entire town, they had stopped by his house this morning to ask some questions. Apparently they hadn't been the first. The report may have been brief, but apparently the police had done a much more thorough interview and not an entirely friendly one. Mr. Haymond hadn't been real eager to talk to anyone else about the issue. They certainly hadn't been invited in for coffee. They managed to confirm that he was adamant that he didn't remember anything and that he hadn't noticed anything odd beforehand and that he didn't like being asked strange questions about his personal life.

There'd been something off about him, but at the time it was nothing Sam could put into words. Dean shrugged it off. He wasn't surprised the guy was twitchy. The supernatural had that effect on normal people. Sam understood that but he also couldn't explain why it felt like he was missing something.

But there hadn't been time to dig deeper. They had watched him drive away, supposedly in a hurry to get into work early since his boss was already considering firing him. They hadn't tried to stop him. They had both assumed there'd be more time to find out more. They hadn't expected to hear that the man's body had been found mere hours from the last time they had seen him.

Bill Haymond had left home at about seven in the morning. Sometime after that, Mr. Haymond had traveled at least twenty minutes from his house to this field, lost his clothes, been carved up from head to toe and killed – all of this before Hayden and Jacob Allen took their shortcut through the field next to their house to catch the 8:10 school bus.

It was fast work. And Dean was right. It was impressive.

They were looking for signs of demonic activity and it seems they found it. The local Sheriff was more than happy that FBI Agents Peter Venkman and Egon Spengler where already in the area and willing to assist.

Dean tilted his head to the side, examining the corpse sprawled face up in the weeds. Two of the county officials had already lost their breakfasts at the sight of the body. "You have to admire the penmanship," Dean continued.

Sam sighed but his brother was right. The body wasn't slashed so much as carefully carved with a slew of ruins, symbols and archaic handwriting. He recognized at least three different forms of writing and each of them was sliced into the skin with excellent precision. "I'm going to need pictures. There's a lot here I don't recognize and I don't think it's a reproduction error."

"Already on it, Sammy boy," Dean replied. He had his phone out and was snapping away. The quality would be shitty, but it was the best they had with their limited resources.

"I think we can rule out anything animalistic," Sam added. That had been the first thing they had both thought of hearing the description 'slash marks'. But he supposed 'ruins carved into human skin' was not a phrase that came readily to small town cops. Sam stood up and started examining the surroundings. There wasn't anything to indicate any kind of struggle. The ground was relatively undisturbed, a small path worked into the underbrush, probably by the same boys who found the body. A pile of clothes, presumably Mr. Haymond's, was a few feet away. Sam poked around a bit. Nothing looked torn or bloody, so they must have come off before somebody got to work.

"Ya think?" Dean replied absently. He was crouched down by the body, contorting himself to get a better shot of the side of the guys' arm without having to touch anything.

"Some form of demonic ritual?"

"What else would it be," Dean muttered. Lately it did seem like that was all they ever dealt with. And if Dean had hated demons before he went to hell, that was nothing compared to how he was now.

"Think they got what they wanted?"

"Don't know. Either option sucks." When Sam glanced over at him, he shrugged. "Either we're too fucking late, and that sucks. Or we're not and this is only going to get worse."

They looked at each other over what remained of Mr. Haymond.

Sam sighed. "I think we're done here. I'll see what I can find based on the pictures."

Dean huffed out his own sigh. "Guess I'm stuck talking to the family. Nothing but good times, this job."


	6. Chapter 6

Two flights and one long drive and nearly a day after first hearing about the case, Scully slammed shut the door of their rental car and stared at the building in front of her.

"I warned you," Mulder said.

She sighed. "I know." Small towns. They'd worked in enough of them during their time together. "Doesn't mean I have to like it," she added.

He shot her a grin then led the way into the funeral home. Owls Head was categorized as an honest to god village and that meant it wasn't set up to handle murder cases. So the body had been moved to the nearby town of Malone. But even Malone was limited in its resources, and the body was currently being stored at the Forest Shades Funeral Home.

It was going to be that kind of case and she had to remind the professional in her that she had certainly worked in worse conditions.

The front room was dark and decorated in warm colors and artificial flowers. Mulder hesitated only a moment before striding passed the public space and opening doors until he found something more practical. Scully hung back in the hallway, content to let Mulder force his way through.

"Hello!" he greeted cheerfully, holding the door open to one of the last rooms. "We're here to see the body. The weird one."

The door must lead into an office of some kind, because there was the sound of a chair squeaking and a voice squawking "I can't-"

"Sure you can," Mulder replied. "FBI," he explained, pulling out his badge and showing it quickly. Scully stepped up to his shoulder and pulled hers out as well. She held it up longer, however, letting the poor man take a close look – and taking a good long look herself. She had learned the hard way to pay attention to people like the gentleman in front of her. When things went sidewise – as they so often did with anything Mulder took an interest in – it was people like this that sometimes meant the difference between surviving or not.

There was nothing remarkable about the man. Late forties, maybe early fifties. Dark hair just starting to go grey, but already well on its way to thinning. He was wearing a long sleeve shirt, buttons done all the way up the collar and tight at the sleeves. He looked at Mulder like he expected the man to try to rob the place. But he listened when Scully started talking.

"We're here to examine the body that would have been brought in this morning. Mr. William Haymond. We were told the body hasn't been transferred yet."

The man suddenly looked a little green just at the mention of it. "No. I mean, yes. It's – He's still here. Bill Haymond. Donald asked me to hold it until other arrangements could be made."

"Great!" Mulder replied. "Where is it?"

The man backed up a little, and looked like he'd happily slam the door in their face if Mulder hadn't been holding it open. "I can't – Donald's not here right now. I can call – "

"Sure, sure," Mulder agreed easily. "I'll want to talk to him eventually too. But we'll go ahead and have a look at the body now," he told him, already moving to peak impatiently into the next door.

Scully smiled stiffly. "I'm a medical doctor and can do the exam alone," she reassured him. "Are your facilities in the basement or off-site?"

"Basement?" the man offered.

"Great!" Mulder called out, already thundering down the flight of stairs he had found. Scully gave the man one last strained smile before following after him. The clinical aspect of the facility was much more apparent below. The finishings were newer but there were still a few personal touches that made it clear this was the domain of only a couple employees. Scully took control of the situation as soon as she took her coat off. She found Mulder a task to keep him out of her way before prepping her station and examining her tools.

The mortician had followed them down, hovering near the wall and watching both of them. He seemed to decide they weren't going to immediately burn the place down because he disappeared back upstairs before she pulled the body out of the cooler.

Or maybe he just didn't want to be around when she uncovered him. She could understand why. Time had done nothing to make the view easier. The body hadn't even been cleaned yet, but the damage was still clearly visible in deep puckered wounds.

Mulder whistled softly as the two of them stared at the body.

"Severe lacerations," Scully started, gathering her thoughts and making sure to get all of her observations out loud for her recorder. "Mostly superficial, but some have penetrated down to the muscular level. Trauma covering approximately – 80 to 90 percent of the visible skin. Nearly everything, including the face, hands, and," she checked, "bottom of the feet. Fingers and toes appear completely intact, no sign of injury. Same with the eyes, nose and mouth. No sign of sexual assault. Lacerations appear deliberate and structured. Possibly writing – "

"Defiantly writing," Mulder added, snapping away at pictures. "I recognize some of them."

"Some form of satanic symbolism?" she asked, gesturing at one particular mark she thought looked familiar.

"Not necessarily," he answered, "but possibly. Who knows."

"These lines are all clear and precise."

"Steady hand?" he asked.

"Absolutely. I've known surgeons who would have struggled with this."

"Can you determine the cause of death?"

"Not yet. I've just started looking at the body, Mulder. I could probably spend all night here and still find more. But I can tell you he was alive when these marks were made."

Mulder grimaced but kept taking photo after photo. "Would that have been enough to kill him?"

"Possibly," she replied. "But more likely the shock alone did it, if there's no other trauma. But Mulder, based on the bleeding I'm seeing these marks were either made _very_ quickly or he survived for quite some time."

Mulder paused. "I'm not sure which is worse," he commented.

"Agreed."

There was the sound of boots above and Mulder and Scully looked at each other. For once, they had official permission to be here, on an advisory basis. Their request had been granted, most likely, to get Mulder out of the office and annoying someone other than the FBI chain of command. When it came to cases like this, most local authorities were more than happy to hand it over to anyone who would take it.

But the two of them had also learned from experience not to trust in the common sense and good judgment of other people.

"Stall?" she suggested.

* * *

Mulder slipped the camera safely into the inside pocket of his suit jacket. Scully would need an hour, maybe two, to finish her analysis, and even then it would be rushed and limited by the tools available to her. He took the stairs two at a time on his way up, trying to give himself as much of a head start as possible. No official request had been made to the FBI, so their presence here was going to be a bit of a surprise. They had permission, but not exactly endorsement to stick their noses into this case. And the whole thing would go a lot better if he could keep the local law enforcement complacent – or at the very least out of Scully's hair.

He put on his best bored official face as he stepped out onto the main floor and firmly shut the door behind him. The mortician was standing in the hall with a thick set, shorter man with a military hair cute and a badge and a gun.

"Sherriff's office?" Mulder asked before anyone else could say anything.

"Got that right," the officer answered, stepping to the front. "Can I see some ID?" he opened with.

It wasn't openly agnostic, so Mulder held his out nonchalantly, with the same bored tolerance of getting carded for beer. The other man studied long enough to have checked the name and expiration date. "And you are?" Mulder demanded, though he already had an idea.

"Sheriff Donald Brooks," and at least he had the decency to show his own identification in return. "I wasn't aware there were more of you in town."

"Unusual missing person's cases are always an issue of interest to the agency," Mulder stated, laying out the prepared explanation for why they had come so quickly. "We prefer to be proactive on –" he swallowed the rest of it. "Others?"

"The two gentlemen from this morning," the Sheriff replied with a frown.

Mulder's thought process scrambled. He wasn't so much surprised – he was getting used to his cases being high-jacked and it was usually the sign that he was on the right track – but there were too many possible players to know for sure who was involved or how to handle it.

"We're the specialists," he finally settled on. "Our office had us on a plane as soon as possible."

The problem was, he couldn't tell if the Sheriff had a favorable view of the imposters or not. That made it hard to know how to play this and if he could count on the Sheriff to jump their way if things went bad. He wasn't giving Mulder a lot to work with. His face had the same tight expression he'd had from the beginning. Asking would be too obvious and dangerous. Whoever these fake FBI agents were, Mulder needed to know more before he could act and he certainly didn't want to raise the Sheriff's suspicions and possible send him after these fake FBI agents alone and unprepared. Games within games.

When in doubt, change the subject. "What can you tell me about Mr. Haymond? I've got his missing person's report. Did you interview him when he returned?"

There was a slight shift in his shoulders as the Sheriff settled back on his feet. "No," he answered without hesitation. "My deputy did. At the time, we had no reason to suspect a violent crime had been or would be committed."

That was one euphemism for the mutilated corpse down in the basement. "A stable man goes missing for over 24 hours, returns with no memory of what happened, and you don't find it odd?"

"Odd? Sure. But I try not to waste my time on gossip." The Sheriff sighed and rubbed at his face. "Or what I thought was going to be nothing more than gossip, at least. It looked like some kind of fling, you know? My deputy had him checked for drugs, which was our first guess, but it came back clean. Sharon's did as well."

Mulder nodded along, not terribly surprised that a small town law enforcement office found nothing quantifiable. "Wait. You tested someone else too?" he asked, surprised at how thorough they had been.

Sheriff Brooks gave him a look like he was an idiot. "Sharron Howard."

"Who's Sharron Howard?" Mulder demanded, trying to figure out the connection.

The Sheriff frowned. "One of our other missing person reports."

"One of? Just how many do you have?"

"Three."

"Three?" Mulder demanded. Surely, he hadn't heard right.

The Sheriff scowled. "That's what I said."

"And what's your average?" Mulder fired back.

"About three a year," he replied crisply. But then he sighed. "But it's only March now and mostly it's runaways or somesuch. Not people like Bill. He's got a good job. Doesn't – didn't drink much. Not in excess at least. Reliable. Same with Catherine Maxwell."

Mulder hurried to pull out a pen and his pocket notebook. "Maxwell?"

The Sheriff nodded. "Nice lady. Lives just south of here and works admin at the high school. Lives alone, but's probably never been late to work a day in her life so her co-workers got all spun up when she didn't come in one day. I sent someone around the house and her dinner was still on the table. Oddest damn thing. My men checked the area, couldn't find her. About five o'clock at night she comes wandering down the street. Couldn't remember a damn thing. We figured a stroke or somethin' but then Sharron Howard did the same thing."

Mulder was on his second page and still scribbling away, his notes a mixture of all of the information the Sheriff had given him and half formed questions as they came to him. 'Weather?' was a quick reminder to check the conditions of that night. A middle aged secretary wasn't going to go wandering far in the cold up here. 'Food?' was an important question to ask her when he did his interview. If she left during dinner and didn't return until the next day, she'd likely be rather famished. Unless something happened during that time. There'd been a case of that in Mississippi a few years back. A person was gone nearly 48 hours in the wild but showed no interest in food or drink.

"When you say the same thing," Mulder asked. "How same is the same? The _exact_ same, or similar? Did she leave during dinner? Did she return on foot? Did she say anything, maybe something similar to something Ms. Maxwell said?"

To give him credit, the Sheriff thought about it for a moment. "No," he said slowly, seeming to gather his thoughts. "Sharron left from work, in the middle of a shift. Caused some hoopla at work. A girlfriend of hers went by to figure out why and said she wasn't home and her car was missing. More than a day later, Sharron calls, says she woke up in a hotel room with no idea how she got there. That was about four hours after Haymond went missing."

Mulder's eyebrows shot up and he quickly scribbled out a timeline in the margins of his notes.

Sheriff Brook clenched and unclenched his jaw and his tone was sharp and curt when he continued. "It didn't look good, at all. Either one or both of them were up to something they shouldn't have been. I had a girl that didn't remember anything, a man that claimed he didn't but had clearly been out of town without tellin' the wife. I honestly thought I was about to have a real shit-storm on my hands, if you'll pardon the language. But Sharron backed off real quick. No charges and suddenly didn't want to talk about any of it. I expected as much from Haymond, but there was no question he was at work when Sharron went missing."

The Sheriff trailed off. There was no good explanation, at least not at the moment. And that probably bothered him quite a bit. Mulder flashed him a genuine grin. He was much more familiar with events that didn't add up. It was the pieces that didn't fit that told you the most. And this case had quite a few.

The Sheriff just frowned back. "Most logical answer," he said firmly, as if willing it so, "is that the two of 'em were having some kind of affair and arranged things to make it look like they weren't."

This time Mulder really was impressed by the jump of logic. "By pretending to have been kidnapped and suffering from amnesia? Not exactly subtle."

"You have a better explanation?"

Mulder grinned but kept his mouth shut.


	7. Chapter 7

Sharron Howard opened the door to her apartment with enough force to send her long hair flying back away from her face. She was wearing a soft pale blue top and black slacks and a scowl. A scowl that very quickly transformed into something a bit warmer as she clearly inspected Dean and found him somewhat acceptable.

"Can I help you?" she asked. Her tone wasn't exactly friendly, but she seemed at least interested in what he might have to say.

Dean could work with that and was suddenly very happy that Sam had decided to binge on research to try to figure out the symbols they had found carved into poor Haymond and had sent Dean out to do the grunt work of interviewing possible leads.

He smiled at her slowly. "Afternoon," he drawled. "I'm Peter Venkman," he said, letting the name roll of his tongue like it was the most natural thing in the world. Though if he'd known one of their 'kidnapping' victims was going to be hot, he might have gone with something a bit more impressive. Venkman was a damn mouth full, even if he was the cool one of the Ghostbusters. "Can I have a moment of your time?" And okay, it was a bit rough trying to be smooth on the job. But it was all about how you asked, not what you asked.

The door opened a little wider, but the tone stayed the same. "What do you want?"

Dean bit back the unprofessional reply – even though it may have been more welcome that what he really had to ask. "I'm an FBI agent," he told her in the same tone of voice he had when trying to use that line in a bar. "I need to talk to you about – "

She started to slam the door shut and he jerked his arm out to stop it half way. "Whoa, whoa!"

Not only had the scowl returned, ruining what looked like a perfectly good opportunity, but it had grown into something closer to a snarl. "I'm not saying anything and I don't have to." She was pulling on the door hard, but wasn't trying to smash his face in, so he guessed she believed he was a Fed enough not to assault him.

"Look, lady, I don't care about any of that shit," and he had a fairly good idea exactly what shit it was. Small towns were pretty consistent that way. Give them half a chance to talk shit about somebody and they would. It made it hard to be a normal person in town after something supernatural had fucked up your life. "Haymond's dead and we've got reason to worry whatever got him might be interested in you," which was a bit more blunt than he liked to be, but it did the job. She stopped tugging on the door and her eyes went from narrowed angry slits to wide open and freaked out.

"What?"

"Christ," Dean muttered. "Look, can we talk about this? Maybe inside?"

She didn't answer, but she let go of the door and shuffled back a bit. Dean was willing to take that as a yes. He slipped by her into the house, checking out the space automatically. It was a small apartment, old-ish but only in the out-of-date, built in the 80s kind of way and not the historical homes aspirations that some of the other places in town had. She had it decked out all girly with bright colors and decorative crap that seemed to crowd every surface. There was one main room with sightlines to the kitchen - and as far as he could tell no one else was home (always good to check for possible ambushes), there was nothing particularly witchy about (because life had made him twitchy about women and grudges) and he didn't see any dead bodies, body parts or blood (which was always a possibility with this job and should never be ruled out. People were fucking crazy).

Sharron didn't wait for him. She walked straight over to her couch and dropped onto it heavily. "This is so fucked up," she muttered.

Which was something Dean could agree with, but hey, she was still alive and currently all in one piece. So, you know, things could be a lot worse. A LOT worse. But somehow he didn't think she'd appreciate him pointing that out, so he kept it simple, stupid, the way his father had taught him. "That's why I'm here, miss," he told, using the tone of voice he always used with women when he wanted them to think of him as the big strong protector. Sam said it made him sound like he had to cough, but Sammy didn't know shit about women. He moved to sit next to her on the couch, aiming for that magic distance between friendly and creeper. When she kept staring down at the floor looking lost and overwhelmed, he tried scooting just a smidge closer. To be reassuring. "We don't know anything yet, but we don't want to take any chances, now do we?" he told her, hoping she would take the bait. "But in order for me to help protect you, I need to know everything you can tell me. Even if it seems crazy."

Bad word choice! She shot him a glare so fast and so venomous he was a little worried again about checking the house for any witch paraphernalia.

"Not that you're crazy!" he insisted, holding up his hands and not understanding why that made her glare even more. "I didn't say that. I just meant, if there was something you wanted to tell me, that you know, sounded a little crazy. That that would be okay. You know. Cause – what I mean is – things have probably been crazy for you, right? Not you're crazy but that things happening to you are crazy. That kind of crazy. I'm going to stop saying that word now. Trust me, lady, there isn't anything you could tell me that I haven't heard before."

She had her arms crossed and was leaning away from him as much as she could without getting up all together and moving away. But she let him dig himself deeper with every word and didn't say anything. And when he finally got his mouth back under control she just glared at him. Which wasn't reassuring.

"Look, something crazy as fuck happened to Bill Haymond. I don't want it happening to anyone else. Help a guy out here."

She finally softened a bit at that. "I don't know what happened to him."

"I didn't say you did," Dean agreed even though he had learned by now not to rule anybody out.

"And I really don't remember anything," she repeated.

He nodded quickly. "I get that. That's fine. How about we talk about what you do remember, before or after."

"I wasn't drinking," she snapped out.

"Okay. No drinking. I didn't think you were. You left during work, right?"

And this time she flushed a bright pink that he might have called delicate in different setting but right now was more angry red, like someone had slapped her in the face. "I don't – I don't remember saying the things I said at work."

"That's good. I mean, that helps. That means whatever happened, it happened while you were at work, right?"

She shrugged sullenly, but her eyes were watching him.

Dean rallied his best smile. "Alright. So whatever happened, happened while you were at work and you were still capable – physically – of talking and walking. That actually rules out a lot of things, see?"

She nodded slowly, almost begrudgingly.

"Alright. Did you notice anything odd during the part of the day that you remember? Anybody give you anything? You smell anything odd, like rotten eggs or something? Maybe saw somebody acting weird?"

"No. No one gave me anything." She added a shrug, something almost like a wry grin on her face. "And nothing weirder than normal at work. Mr. Green tried to cash another 'check' but he's old enough to be my great grandpa. We all know just to give it back to him and tell him to come by again later. Durrell was a skeezball, again, but he's been like that ever since he left his wife. I – the last thing I remember I was talking to Grace about what to eat for lunch. I don't remember anything after that. Honestly. I would never – " she cut off with a sniffle and Dean was suddenly much more in favor of her being mad and hostile to him than what was coming. "She says I said all kinds of things. Mean things. I mean, sure, she's gained a few pounds since high school but I wouldn't ever say that to her face! And I certainly don't think she's annoying. Grace is a sweetheart, honestly. Anyone who says differently better not where I can hear 'em. Even after – after what I supposedly said to her – when I woke up in that skivvy hotel, all alone and freaked out of my mind, she was the first person I called and she was nothing but nice to me."

"Christo," Dean muttered, just to be sure.

"I know, right?" she agreed blithely. "Christ, what the hell." She looked over at him. "Do you – you think you can figure out what happened? I mean, to me."

"Sure," Dean agreed because what else was he going to say? She didn't want a play-by-play of how often shit like this only got worse. "That's the plan. But I may come by later. Just to check on the house. Maybe leave some stuff behind, like salt by the doors. Don't you worry about that, okay? That all just FBI stuff, okay?"

A normal person would have called him on his bullshit. But normal people didn't cross his line of work too often. And when people were scared, and somebody came along saying 'hey, so do this and everything will be fine' you'd be surprised how often they just went along with it. The trick was not to hesitate or flinch when telling them what to do. If you made it _sound_ sane, people didn't question it as much.

She wasn't buying it all the way, but she nodded slowly. She even smiled a little. "That might be nice. If you stopped by. It's been creepy the last few days, being alone and everything."

Well now. Apparently she bought it more than he thought. Dean smiled slowly, more than happy to take advantage of a good situation.

And then someone knocked on the damn door.

Sharron jumped, startled by the sudden loud noise and Dean cursed silently. An unexpected visitor was generally not a good thing. Sharron only gave him an apologetic look as she got up to answer it. Dean ignored her in favor of moving to the side away from the windows. It wouldn't hide him, but it would give him better cover if the shit really hit the fan. He didn't really expect whatever had sliced and diced good old Bill Haymond to show up on the girl's doorstep, but weirder shit had happened to him.

Though not quite as weird as Fox fucking Mulder.

Sharron had opened the door more widely this time, than she had greeting Dean. Apparently she wasn't as worried about noisy neighbors and invasive cops when she already had one FBI 'agent' in her house. So they both got a good look at each other. The Fed already had his badge out, holding it up in a sloppy crooked kind of half way. Dean had one hand going for his gun even though he knew it wasn't going to do him a damn bit of good. The guy might be annoying as fuck, but Dean wasn't going to shoot him for it. Running was probably the only option, but it wasn't instinctive and it was going to be a damn problem for the case if it got out that not only were Dean and Sam fake agents but, oh, yeah, wanted big time for murder and other crazy-ass shit.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

He couldn't walk away from this one. He couldn't give it up and just move on to the next case like they'd done before. Any other time, there'd be plenty of weird shit to go around and he could handle walking away on the justification that the FBI was actually trying to fix things. But whatever this was had Cas's panties in a bunch and that took some serious shit to do.

And while Dean was busy having his own private freak out, Mulder smiled brightly and _waved._ "Just the man I was looking for!" he exclaimed cheerfully.

It was about the most annoying thing ever and Dean didn't have a choice but standing their mutely, hoping this insanity meant he wasn't going to get arrested immediately. The situation might be salvageable if he could just get out of this room.

"Ah, I didn't realize you'd already be here," Mulder continued. He didn't step into the room though. "Working hard, I see. And where might your other half be, hm?" The man gave a fake laugh that was so obvious it was painfully awkward just being on the other side of it. "Hopefully he's not lurking around here anywhere."

Dean had a moment to be very grateful Sammy wasn't. No sense in both of them getting caught up in this shitstorm. Dean would much rather it be him. Besides, one of them had to be running loose and free if they were going to get the other one of them out. The Fed's eyes were busy scanning the room, clearly looking for his missing bean-pole of a brother and Dean couldn't help but smirk back. Yeah, suit, you better be scared.

But this guy had the self-preservation instincts of a lemming. Instead of understanding the clear threat implied in Dean's cocky grin, the guy was maybe even more chipper than before. "Ms. Howard," he said, shifting his focus so fast Dean almost felt lost and confused. "I hope my counterpart's been very polite and professional."

Dean apparently wasn't the only one confused. Sharron looked like she'd changed her mind about this whole cooperating with the FBI thing and was looking at both of them like they were the crazy ones, not her. "I guess?"

"Oh, okay, that's great. But you know, we need to have a word or two – "

"Actually, I was just leaving," Dean interrupted. A little voice in the back of his head was chanting _come on, come on, hurry up and get outta here_ but he tried to play it cool. "I'll just get out of your way and – "

"Oh, no worries! We can go together. I can drive you back in my car."

"I brought my own."

"Funny, I didn't see it out front, and it's so distinctive. Hard to miss."

Which was exactly why he'd parked it around the block and braved the still icy sidewalks to make it to Sharron's house. The Impala was a beautiful car and deserved to be recognized. Just not when Dean was hip deep in shit.

"I'm sure you've got your own questions to ask," Dean tried but Mulder spoke right over him.

"Oh, no. I'm sure you've been very…specific. But I'm sure we've taken up enough of Ms. Howard's time. You can catch me up somewhere else. I'd love to sit down and talk. We haven't had a chance to do that, have we? Sit down and talk. Not since that diner. We really out to do that. I'd love to hear your theories on all this. But I'm afraid we really ought to be going. So nice of you to make the time, Ms. Howard. We'll just get out of your hair. Wouldn't want to cause you any trouble. Here, you go first," he said, clearly addressing the last part to Dean as he finally moved. He stepped out of the doorway, into the house instead of backwards, putting himself sideways in front of Sharron. He had to be crowding her in the most awkward way ever but it was a clear message meant for Dean not to get any funny ideas about hurting her or using her as a meat shield. It'd be insulting if it wasn't the same thing Dean would have done if their roles had been reversed.

It also didn't stop Dean from rolling his eyes and sharing a look with Sharron that made it clear he agreed this guy was nuts. He gave her one last playful smile – no sense burning that bridge if he didn't have to – before squaring his shoulders and stepping out to face the music.


	8. Chapter 8

There was a moment that they both stood on the small front porch of Sharron Howard's townhouse and stared silently at the green space that boarded the building. It was a work day, and the neighborhood was fairly quiet. There was the sound of a dog barking a couple of doors away and a car turned onto the street down the block.

Dean Winchester stood there with his hands loose but visible. He and Mulder were about of the same height but the other man was broader in shoulder and had the muscle mass to back it up. His suit was clean and free of wrinkles, but the fit was just a bit too tight in the shoulders. Hard to get a good fit when buying off the rack.

"I do want to talk," Mulder commented. It seemed the safe thing to say. While he hadn't exactly expected to run into the Winchester brothers on this job, he also couldn't say he was surprised. Weird was their calling card, after all.

Dean grunted, shifting on his feet and moving just a little bit farther away. "I don't do talking well."

"You don't say," Mulder replied, unable to resist the dry humor even if it wasn't terribly productive. He had a wanted felon cooling his heels right in front of him. The same mystery he'd been poking at like a sore tooth ever since they first crossed paths. He'd been hoping for a chance like this, but it was hard to know where to start. There were signs that the Winchester brothers clearly believed in the occult, but everything about them was so maddeningly inconsistent.

The one firm thing Mulder had at the moment was the body Scully was busy documenting.

If Dean wanted to be blunt, then Mulder could be blunt.

"Did you kill Bill Haymond?" he asked as politely as if he was asking what time it was or if this seat was taken. Dean seemed to be a highly functioning whatever-he-was and had a history of interacting seamlessly with the rest of society. There was no reason to think the question would set him off, but then again, he was accused of violently killing a lot of people. Polite seemed a good place to start.

Dean didn't seem offended. He just snorted. "No."

Which was the expected response, sure. And Mulder might even believe him. It wouldn't be the first time he'd found someone struggling against something bigger and darker than the rest of the world was ready for. But it was equally possible Dean Winchester was every kind of crazy Scully thought he was. Even worse, it was possible it was neither of those. "Do you know who did?" he asked. Because that was the other possibility and this was probably his best chance to ask Dean without his brother influencing him.

But even that question didn't seem to register much. Dean shrugged. He had turned a bit more inward to face Mulder, but he was still studiously avoiding eye contact. Mulder didn't doubt for a second Dean was watching his every move, but he was still evading anything resembling engagement. "Not yet," he grumbled, looking annoyed and agitated and restless.

It was a look Mulder knew from personal experience. He raised his eyebrows, trying to show only polite interest nothing more. Apparently, Dean and Sam Winchester didn't just dress up like FBI agents to avoid being arrested. Apparently, he really had been interviewing Sharron Howard as a witness. "Who do you think did?" he asked, desperate to find out more about how that brain of his was working.

But Dean was still reticent. He only shrugged this time.

Which told Mulder absolutely nothing. The conversation had already gone on much longer than Mulder had anticipated, but this was also probably the only chance he had at getting the truth. He couldn't afford not to take advantage of it.

Maybe it was time to try getting at this a bit sideways. "You wouldn't happen to know ancient Hebrew, would you?" he asked.

It wasn't the expected question and it was successful at getting Dean to look straight at him for a moment. "Do I look like the kind of guy who does?" he demanded.

Which was a very good question. Sure, the suit might make him look a bit like a professional, but Mulder had also seen him fresh off of the road before. He had a fairly good idea of what kind of man Dean looked like. But he took a moment to pointedly look him over before replying. "Kind of," he said before smirking.

Dean scowled back. "I didn't kill that guy."

"Then why are you here, Dean?"

And that was enough to get Mulder the reaction he was looking for. Dean's face flushed quickly. His fists clenched but didn't go for the gun Mulder knew he had to have. And instead of continuing to slowly slink away off the porch the way he had been, Dean stepped forward until he was in Mulder's face. "Look, whatever killed that guy might try killing her. And no, it ain't me or my brother. If she didn't have anything to do with causing what happened to him, then there's a good chance whatever it was might come after her. It's as good a place to start with as any."

Which was all very logical and much more focused on why Sharron Howard was valuable than Dean defending himself or his brother. Dean didn't claim to have an alibi. Barely even disputed the implication that he might have had something to do with Bill Haymond's death. In fact, he didn't even seem that worried that Bill Haymond was dead at all – only that Sharron Howard might be killed too.

"Dean," Mulder tried, keeping his voice as level and calm and not excited as he could. "Who or what do you think might have done it?"

Because that was the big question. The one he'd want to know the answer to from the first time he saw both brothers in that diner. There was something out there that they were tangled up in – or at least something they believed was out there. It was the only explanation that fit each of the little disjointed pieces of their life that was full of bizarre and violent crime. Scully might look at them and see trauma and uncontrolled and unreasoned urges. But Mulder saw a focus that wasn't constrained by arbitrary rules. It was ritualized, certainly, but not in the obsessively compulsory way common in true sociopaths. And if they weren't sociopaths, then it left the very interesting question of _what_ were they.

Dean breathed in deeply, his face pinched. He made an abortive gesture as if he wanted to shove his hands in his pockets but then thought better of it. "I really don't think you're ready for that one, buddy," he muttered and it was perhaps the friendliest thing to come out of his mouth.

It wasn't his fault that it was probably the most offensive thing a person could say to Mulder. It went beyond just the insanity of trying to decide for other people what they were and were not ready for or the gross injustice of keeping something significant enough to kill people a secret. The worst part was that if there was anyone in the world who was ready, it was Mulder. Apparently, he hadn't been doing a good enough job at communicating that, though he couldn't possibly understand why the message wasn't getting through loud and clear.

But he was stubborn and not about to give up now. He gritted his teeth, plastered on his best 'I dare you' smile and replied "try me."

Dean stared at him. It was a calm stare, a bit suspicious but tightly controlled. As if Dean didn't care at all what Mulder thought. It was somewhat intimidating in how professional and detached it was. Mulder had worked with all sorts of different people over the years from military to scientists to fringe elements. Most people, by the time Mulder got there, were already worked up enough that at least some of the stress showed, even if it was just peeking through the cracks.

He could only think of a few exceptions and the comparison was not a favorable one. They tended to be sitting at large imposing desks on the other side from Mulder and held far more of the cards than was fair.

But then Dean grinned slowly, with the kind of easy charm and mischief of someone used to talking his ways in and out of things. "Okay, champ," he drawled. He dropped down a step from Mulder and turned to face him. "A demon named Lilith is trying to break what are called seals. This is usually done by killing someone violently or something else equally horrific. If she manages to break enough of them, she'll be able to start the apocalypse by unleashing Lucifer using my brother as the antichrist." Dean scowled at that but kept rambling on. "We're pretty sure this mess here is one of those seals because an angel told us so. But don't worry, he's not as much of a bastard as most of the rest of his feathered friends. Most of the time. I'm pretty sure," he muttered, for the first time looking uncertain. But then the grin was back, sharp and sarcastic. "Questions? Yeah, I didn't think so."

Mulder opened his mouth to argue. He had questions. He had lots of questions! The problem was more where to start. How many seals had been broken? How did Dean and Sam know what was a seal and what wasn't? Did they have a record of the seals that were broken? Who was Lilith and how had they found her? Angels? Angels that Dean didn't like and why would that be the part that had him muttering and looking unsure and worried? And that bit about Sam…that was probably the hardest to understand. It didn't fit anything he had put together on the two brothers. Dean was fiercely protective, a trait that made sense given their background. Painting Sam as a negative force was the very last thing Mulder would have expected Dean to believe – much less admit to an outside who might be a threat to his brother.

The worst part was Scully's theory that both of them were insane was looking a bit more likely.

But it didn't explain _everything_ …but it did suggest Dean Winchester was not going to be the great reliable source of information Mulder had been hoping for.

And Dean wasn't going to wait for him to articulate any of that. He cut Mulder off before he could even get started. "So let me tell you what I do know you'll understand. There's only so many ways our situation here can go," he said, gesturing to the two of them. "You can try to arrest me. And while I've done that bit before, I'm kind of busy right now and don't have time for this shit. So – either you're going to have to shoot me," he said without even stumbling over the idea, "and I don't think you will. Or you're going to have to try to restrain me." He smirked at the idea. "And let's be honest here, I've got the advantage here in weight class and that's not including the fact that I fight dirty. So how about this. Either we can both walk away calmly and pick this back up at a later time. Or I can knock you about a bit and you can tell them I threatened ya."

Mulder's eyebrows shot up. That was not the usual way these kinds of negotiations went. This was usually _not_ a negotiation. He couldn't help but ask " _are_ you threatening me?" more out of personal curiosity than anything else. He didn't feel threatened. But then again, he was also quickly beginning to feel like he didn't have control of this conversation. And somewhere along the way it had veered off passed odd and straight into ridiculous.

Dean just grinned back. There was almost something warm and playful about his demeanor suddenly. As if not feeling threatened had somehow made Mulder a good guy in his book. "That depends. Are you going to try to stop me?"

"Are you going to kill someone?" Mulder replied bluntly. He had to ask. He couldn't _not_ ask. If he was wrong about the brothers – even just a little bit – he was going to be responsible for whatever happened.

"Probably," was the immediate and horrifying response. "But they'll probably already be dead, if that makes you feel better."

"No," Mulder replied faintly, finally starting to feel in over his head on this one. "Not really. No. Not at all. I could still shoot you," he added.

"I'm willing to take that chance."

"I wouldn't have to shoot somewhere vital," Mulder reasoned with him.

Dean grinned even more. "I'd recommend it though. Cause if you _do_ shoot me and it doesn't kill me, I'm not gonna feel real bad about shooting _you_."

Mulder shifted restlessly. Dean had a point. Mulder wasn't going to shoot him unprovoked. He was half temped to pull his gun just to see if he _could_ provoke a reaction, but he had a feeling that wouldn't accomplish much. "This entire area is on the manhunt for a sadistic killer," he pointed out instead. "All it would take is a phone call."

Dean hummed thoughtfully and that set Mulder on edge more than anything else. "You could," he said. "But I'm startin' to think you won't do that either. You know there's something weird going on here, right? And arresting me ain't going to help you any. You're more interested in figuring this out than dealing with details like me."

"You're fairly sure of yourself," Mulder grumbled.

"Sure, I am," Dean said casually. "Also, there's this," he said, shifting again, just another restless twitch, except this time it was followed up by a fist flying at Mulder's face.

The blow caught him solidly across the cheekbone, hard enough to half knock him off his feet. He grabbed for the railing instinctively, trying to keep himself upright while reaching for his gun at the same time. But Dean already had one hand shoved under his jacket and with a quick yank had it out and sent it flying across the yard all in one motion. Mulder's left eye was watering from the shock of the blow but he was able to track its arched trajectory out past the hedge bushes and halfway into the neighboring yard.

Damn it, he was not going to live this one down. Assuming he wasn't about to get carved up like a turkey.

Dean's hand was back yanking at his jacket. Mulder suddenly released the railing, sending his body slamming down onto the porch with Dean staggering over him. It gave him his best chance to get a knee between him and the larger man. Kicking out, he managed to push Dean back and away, but there wasn't as much resistance as he would have expected. He scrambled backwards, adding space and waiting to see what Dean's next move would be.

But it wasn't the confrontation he was expecting. While he was trying to get himself straightened, Dean was already moving. He was off the porch and ducking to run along back of the apartment complex. Mulder abandoned his defensive position and scrambled after him. There wasn't time to go after the gun and Dean – they were in two different directions. Mulder ignored the throbbing in is head and sprinted as hard as he could, hoping that he had the advantage of speed over Dean's muscle. In a straight run, he probably would have had him. But there was a privacy fence running along the back of the neighborhood and Dean pulled himself up and over as smoothly as if he'd had a ladder. It took Mulder longer to get the right grip to pull himself up and he fumbled the landing badly. By that point Dean was already to the next road and that thrice damn car of his.

Mulder pawed at his jacket, trying to get his phone out. He didn't know for sure who he was going to call, but damn it, he was not going to do nothing! It took him a moment to realize his jacket was unusual light and his cell phone gone.

Somehow, he doubted he'd merely dropped it.

By then, the car was already down the street and taking the turn faster than was reasonable.

No cell phone and his gun lost somewhere in the neighbor's yard, which he'd now have to go back and fetch before some kid found it.

"Nice talking to you too," he grumbled, limping back the way he'd come and trying to figure out how the hell he was going to explain this. And how he was going to convenience Scully to hold off calling in the cavalry. Dean Winchester was a dangerous man, but if they arrested him now, they'd never figure out who had killed Bill Haymond – or how to stop them from killing again.


	9. Chapter 9

"Goddamn, fucking, shit for luck, are you fucking kidding me, son of a bitch, bastard!"

Dean gripped the steering wheel hard enough to hurt but he kept his speed carefully controlled as he weaved in and out of the small streets of Malone. He hadn't seen anyone following him yet, and he'd about gone cross eyed trying to both watch the road and frantically check his mirrors for pursuit. The fed's phone was lost somewhere in the passenger foot well. He'd need to find some place to dump it. Or at the very least pause long enough to turn it off.

Priorities first. At the first stop light he got caught at he yanked out his own phone and hit speed dial. It only rang once before Sam answered, his voice distracted the way he got when he was up to his eyeballs in lore and ancient texts.

"Found something?"

Dean growled. "Yeah, you can fucking bet I have and it's going to screw us three ways from Sunday."

Sam paused. "Witches?" he asked.

Dean shuddered. "God, no." Man, he really fucking hated witches. " _Feds_."

There was another pause, this one long enough Dean started to get impatient. "Okay?" Sam finally asked. "We've worked around Feds before."

"Not these Feds, and not when they show up in the middle of my questioning. It's that fucking fruit cake again." He didn't have to specify any more than that. Those two had been a freakin' thorn in their side for weeks now. It was the kind of complication they _really_ did not need right now.

Sam cursed. "Okay, okay," he said, trying to be the calm one. "Did he see you?"

"What do you think? He barged right while I was questioning Sharron Howard." It was a stupid question, but Dean could already hear his brother packing up the essentials and the quick reaction was somewhat mollifying.

"I assume since I'm talking to you that you didn't get arrested," Sam replied dryly.

"Just barely," Dean muttered back. "The guy wanted to _talk_. Or some shit. Got him to drag it out long enough no one was looking."

The rustling on the other end of the line stopped. "Dean. What did you do?"

Such faith. "I handled it."

"Yeah, I got that. How badly did you handle it?"

"Look, he's not going to be calling anyone any time soon. Just – pack up the shit and get ready to move. We'll just have to live out of the car for a bit."

Sam cursed again, the prima donna. He hated living out of the car. Though if he wasn't so gangly, it wouldn't be as much of a problem. Still it _was_ going to be damn cold this time of year this far north, but they'd make it work.

"I'm not leaving this job," Dean told him.

"Great!" Sam snapped. "Why would we? Christ. Okay, okay, we'll figure it out. But, Jesus, Dean. How'd you get away from him? Please tell me you didn't shoot him."

Dean scowled. "A little credit here." He wasn't in the habit of shooting humans. Not unless they were shooting at him or had decided summoning some boogeyman was the way to deal with interpersonal conflict. Or witches. He made an exception for witches, but mostly because they courted that evil shit. "I just punched him. He was too busy yappin' to see it comin'."

More cursing but this time Dean smiled, quite pleased with himself for a job well done.

* * *

"Scully?" Mulder's voice called down the stairs.

"In here!" she answered back without pausing in her notes. It wasn't the longest write up she had ever drafted, but it was close. The sheer extent of damage done, and the meticulousness of each cut….there was a significant amount of detail to cover and that didn't even include her own personal theories. Theories she hesitated to put to paper. Ones that were perhaps better held back for a discussion with Mulder…

She hurried to finish her last thought, knowing she'd be distracted as soon as he made his way into the mortuary room. So far, the local authorities had left her alone to focus on her work and the peace and quiet had been helpful. She doubted things would stay that way for long.

Mulder shuffled his way in without a word. That was the first clue something was wrong.

She glanced up from her work and her eyes widened. Mulder had the beginning of a spectacular black eye on the left side of his face. He also had that slightly guilty look to him, as he shuffled about nervously near the door and wouldn't meet her eyes, that meant he'd done something dramatically stupid.

"Mulder, what happened?" she exclaimed, moving immediately from her desk to pull him into the light. The blow was still angry and red, but she could see where it would develop over time. It had been a solid hit. She immediately started checking him over for other injuries. His hands were scuffed but not his knuckles. He showed no other obvious signs of defend himself. He tilted his head obediently when she checked the rest of his skull and showed no stiffness in his neck and his reactions were all normal.

"I met some old friends," he finally answered.

That covered a lot of possibilities and she watched his face closely. He didn't seem as upset as she would have expected, so it likely wasn't as bad as it could be. Hopefully it was no one who had previously tried to kill them. Unfortunately that left a surprising number of other possibilities, including several people who actually _were_ their friends but who would still not hesitate to punch Mulder in the face. He had that kind of effect on people.

"Which friends?" she asked slowly. Hopefully this wouldn't be another case of them both risking their careers to go against someone higher up in the food chain than they were.

"One of the Winchester brothers."

Scully inhaled sharply and checked him over one more time. She'd read the entire Winchester file after their last encounter. While she could see why it has sparked Mulder's attention, she was also much more alarmed by the level of violence described than Mulder seemed to be. "Where are they?" she demanded once she determined that he didn't appear to be bleeding from anywhere. "Why didn't you call?"

Mulder flushed, something that made his condition look even worse. "I may have lost my phone. And by lost, I mean had it stolen."

Scully's thoughts raced. The suspect must have gotten close enough to take it, which was far closer than she would have liked. But the contusion on his cheek seemed to be the only injury, and that spoke to a brief encounter. Mulder seem embarrassed – which was both highly out of character for him and not the normal response for a person who had been assaulted. He was also much quieter than she was used to and that made her uneasy.

"Are you sure you're alright?" she asked carefully. The Winchesters were notoriously unpredictable. Her usual assumptions might not hold up under such pressure.

Mulder nodded. "More my pride than anything else," he finally said with an attempt at his usual sarcasm. "It wasn't – " He sighed in frustration. "I'm not sure if I trust my own theories on this one," he admitted.

Scully did her best to keep her face blank. She owed him that respect. It wasn't often Mulder admitted he might be wrong and it had the odd effect of making her want to play devil's advocate and argue the opposite (and usualy illogical) position. No wonder her objectivity had been called into question lately, though she doubted it was because they realized it was born out of her own stubborness more than anything else.

"Mulder. What happened to the two wanted felons?"

"Only one," he corrected her dully. "And they haven't actually been tried for felony. Not yet at least." When she continued to stare at him, he finally sighed and actually answered the question. "I don't know. He hit me and took my phone. I tried to pursue, but I guess I'm not as good at jumping fences as he is."

"We need to call this in. Contact the Sherriff and let him know he has at least one, if not two, very dangerous men on the loose." She started to move around him, intent on heading back up stairs and finding someone to get started on this mess. Mulder held up his hands, though, and moved to block her progress.

"Wait, wait, just – give me a moment, Scully. I got my brain pan knocked about fairly good. I just need a moment to gather my thoughts."

She stopped easily enough, staring back at him shrewdly. "Thoughts about what? The man assaulted you."

"True, but he didn't shoot me," Mulder replied glibly, sound a bit more like himself as he managed a weak looking grin. Moving his face probably hurt.

"Mulder," Scully replied. "I thought we just discussed how serious this is."

"Yes, well, I mean sort of. I do think Dean Winchester is dangerous. I just don't know if he's dangerous to us."

"And Mr. Haymond?"

Mulder flinched but held his ground. "I can't say. But Winchester seemed very concerned about the safety of Sharron Howard. He was very insistent that he was actually there to protect her."

Scully could think of several nefarious reasons for Dean Winchester to be in the general vicinity of Ms. Howard. None of them she would describe as protecting, though in whatever twisted logic the brothers had grown up with, it might seem that way to them. If so, that only made them more dangerous.

"He wasn't threatening her," Mulder continued. "And he was very cooperative right up until he punched me."

Scully arched one eyebrow and Mulder grinned back.

"He was armed, Scully. And he had a fairly good opportunity to shoot me, I'm afraid - don't ask. Not my best moment, I'll admit. But he showed no desire to actually harm me."

Scully shrugged. "Maybe you're not his type," she replied, only half joking. Most violent criminals did have a 'type' but part of what made the Winchester brothers such an interesting case was the seeming lack of any pattern other than the bizarre. And even that didn't hold up universally. A couple of the cases that Mulder had theorized were linked to them showed nothing more unusual than your average case of assault or murder. Nothing spooky other than Mulder's theory that the Winchester's were involved somehow.

"But your theory about them has changed."

Mulder waved one hand vaguely. It was annoying habit of his when he didn't like one of her questions. "Adjusted, maybe." He shrugged, his expression turning wry and a bit embarrassed. "They may in fact be completely insane."

Scully couldn't help it. She snorted. "You think?"

He huffed back but relaxed enough to move over to a nearby stool and slouch on it. "It was always a possibility. Just more likely now. Either he was completely full of shit and my ability to read people has greatly suffered – and no, this was before the blow to the head – or he honestly believes in demons."

Scully nodded along. It did fit the profile. "That would explain some of the markings."

"Or be exasperated by them," Mulder immediately counter argued. "Supposing he heard about it, however it is he and his brother find these things, it would appear to someone of that kind of mentality as the work of satan or a demon."

Scully sighed. "There's a great deal of dangerous territory between one or the other."

Mulder's sigh echoed her own and she was relieved to know he was just as torn. "I know. But I don't think we have a choice."

She glared at him. Of course they had a choice, it just might not be one he liked. He always thought it was them against the world and never wanted to admit they might need help from someone else. "We need to let the Sheriff know and contact our office. We're going to need more people if we're going to try and find them again in these mountains."

"But that's my point exactly!" Mulder exclaimed. "Think about it. They clearly have experience avoiding arrest. And I'm not just talking small town deputies here. Henriskson was after them for months before his death. If we call in the cavalry now, we'll never find them. They'll be gone before we even get started."

"And you think they're not already?"

"I think that either way, no matter what's really going, the Winchesters are obsessed. They won't walk away from this unless they feel they have to. I say we give them a chance."

"A chance, Mulder? Do you realize the kind of risk that would be? What if they repeat what was done to Haymond?"

"And what if it helps us catch whoever did this to poor Mr. Haymond, hm?"

She stared at him. "You think they could actually contribute to this investigation?"

"I think they want to," Mulder replied immediately, his voice growing louder and more confident as he warmed up to the topic. "I think that's exactly why he was at Howard's just now. He wants to know what evil thing did this to Haymond and he thinks it might come after Howard too. Well, I also want to know what evil thing is behind this, even if it's not the same thing Dean suspects. But you've read their file. How often have witnesses argued vehemently that the Winchesters saved them? Maybe they are on to something we can't see."

"Because we're not insane."

Mulder grinned. "Wouldn't be the first time. Come on, Scully. I'm asking you to trust me."

"You're asking me to risk people's lives based on a hunch."

His grin turned impish and she kind of wanted to wipe it off his face. "I've asked you to do the same before."

And damn it all, the worst part was he was right and she had the unfortunate insanity of often giving in and listening to him. She huffed, knowing this was already a fight she had lost. At least for now. "Usually your hunch is based more on you suspecting someone of foul play than of innocence," she pointed out. Already she had a heavy, unpleasant feeling settling in her stomach. It was one thing to take a risk accusing someone and being wrong. It was a very different thing to hope a violent man wasn't a murderer.

She sighed. "I suppose now would be the time to tell you I have my own doubts about this case."

Mulder straightened up, long gangly limbs jerking in as he lost the tired slouch of just a moment before. "What is it?" he demanded, eager.

And it was times like this that reminded Scully of why she stayed. Mulder was always eager to hear her arguments and theories. No matter how wrong he thought she was or how wild his own were compared to hers, he always listened. He might do his best to tear it apart afterwards, but if she was honest, that was part of what made it satisfying.

"I've studied the markings on Bill Haymond's body."

"And? What do they say?"

She huffed in what may have been a laugh under other circumstances. "As for what they say, I can't be sure. We'd need a linguistics specialist to take a look. But I can tell you what they mean in forensics."

"And?"

And now it was time to sound just as crazy as him. "Mulder," she started quietly. "I think Bill Haymond carved them into his own skin."

Mulder stared back at her. "You're sure?"

"No. I'm not sure of anything. I rarely am. That's not the way this works, Mulder," she reminded him. It would be nice to say that science and medicine could explain everything, but the reality was it was more about confirming what was not true than proving what was. She rubbed the spot between her eyes. "But yes, there's strong indication, based on the angle and pressure used that at least some if not all of the wounds were self-inflicted."

Mulder stared back at her and she shrugged helpless. It was an observation. She didn't know if it was accurate or not, but she was responsible for reporting what she saw.

"That – would be difficult," he finally said.

"All but impossible without the assistance of some very potent drugs. I've sent bloodwork to be tested, but it's going to take it a day just to make it to the lab even by the speediest of means. Testing it will take longer. Meanwhile, there are no visible physical indications that he was dosed with anything."

"Would the drugs have caused memory loss?"

"With the amount he would have had to take to stay conscious through that much pain? Yes, absolutely. What it doesn't explain is how he kept such a steady hand. Mulder, I checked the symbols. Most of them aren't roman, but a few are similar enough I could do some basic comparisons. Nothing official, mind you. But the penmanship is very similar to how Bill Haymond wrote."

"Christ."

She nodded. "We'll know more when the blood work comes back. And I've uploaded a few photos to send to some specialists I know. Medical ones. I want their opinion on the cuts. I don't know a linguist. Not one I would show this to, at least."

Mulder was nodding, his mind already racing on. "And your notes?" he asked calmly.

She winced. "I would like to review them some more. Before I share them."

"You mean you're hoping to come up with a better explanation than a man carving himself up enough to exsanguinate."

"Something like that, yes."

"Still think it's the Winchesters?" Mulder challenged, suddenly sounding much more like himself.

"It would match the St. Louis case," she pointed out.

"You mean the one where they supposedly caught Dean Winchester in the act, shot, killed and buried him?"

Scully rolled her eyes. "We really ought to exhume that body," she muttered.

"I've always liked the way your brain works, Scully," Mulder replied proudly, as if digging up bodies was a fun pastime.

"Alright. Alright. For argument's sake, say it's not the Winchesters. Despite everything."

"Very generous of you," he interjected.

"What do we do now, Mulder? Obviously," she drawled looking at his face. "Dean Winchester is not eager to talk to us."

Mulder grinned brightly, the look very much at odds with the damage to his face. "Sure, he is. We just have to convince him that he does."

"And I take it you have a plan for that?"

"Well, I do know where he's likely to be in the foreseeable future. Like I said, he was _very_ worried about Ms. Sharron Howard."


	10. Chapter 10

Moving Sharron Howard seemed counterproductive. If the Winchesters were truly trying to kill her, the easiest way of catching them in the act would be at her home. If it was something else trying to kill her – well, the same held true. They needed Ms. Howard where she was expected to be. It was a risky gamble, Mulder was well aware of that and didn't need Scully's frowns and pinched expressions to remind him.

Certainly not when he had a scowling Ms. Howard also glaring at him most of the afternoon. She hadn't taken to them inviting themselves over with much grace. She had asked more than once about Agent Peter Venkman and whether or not it would be possible to trade them out for him. Each time she asked, Scully got that torn expression she often had when she couldn't decide whether something was so ridiculous it was hilarious or if she just wanted to (metaphorically) knock some sense into people. Being on the receiving end of the latter, Mulder could attest to its impressiveness.

There wasn't much to do to pass the time. Scully had spent the early part of the afternoon asking very carefully worded questions, sometimes repeating herself to see if Ms. Howard's story would change. Once that lost its appeal, and Ms. Howard stormed off to bed, it was just the two of them waiting and watching and listening. Scully had her notes to review. Mulder had borrowed her laptop to try to make some headway on deciphering the markings, but after waiting ten minutes for one page of text to load, he gave it up. He set it up to email a few of the clearer pictures to some of his contacts and waited for them to load.

And waited. About each tenth time he paced from one end of the room to the other, one percent had loaded. How anyone got work done with patchy internet like this, he didn't know. And with nothing else to do but wait, he found his patience wearing thin.

"They have to know we'd be watching tonight," Scully commented ideally, not looking up from her homework.

"I know. But if they're as dedicated to this as we think they are, they won't let that stop them."

She hummed but didn't argue. "Shall we take shifts?"

It was going to be a long night.

* * *

They parked the Impala four blocks away, and cut through a couple of dark fields. Sharron's part of town was a bit more built up than others, but most of it was new construction that valued parking lots and space over being within walking distance of civilization. That made it a bit easier to move around without being noticed.

Dean had tried arguing for going in alone, but Sam had shot that down swiftly. His brother might think it was acceptable to take all kinds of risks now that he was back from the dead – as if having one miracle somehow made him indestructible. All Sam saw was how easy it was to make a mistake in this business. His brother was an idiot, and if they were going to continue with this job then they were going to do it together.

Dean had taken some precautions, however. They were dressed in dark clothing, with what few supplies they needed distributed evenly between them. They had mapped out escape routes and meet up points. Dean had suggested sabotaging the Feds' vehicle, but agreed in the end that it was too risky to try. They had each step planned out, with back-up plans and oh-shit plans and Bobby already notified that this might go pear shaped and to be ready for phone calls.

Really, Dean had probably had a little too much fun planning it all out as if he were some kind of James Bond spy. Sam just wanted to make some progress. Hours spent staring at his computer screen and riffling in old books hadn't turned up much. They had a few phrases, the easy ones. Some of it was basic cryptology and ruins. The only pattern he had been able to find was silence and containment. Which might have something to do with why Cas had sent them on this assignment to begin with. Both brothers still had doubts about how helpful the angels really were being, but this job seemed legit. And even if it wasn't, there were lives on the line and they weren't going to walk away now.

They entered Sharron's apartment complex calmly, walking as if they belonged there but bundled up tightly incoats and scarf to stay away from prying eyes. Walking through the old snow presented some challenges, but thankfully much of it had been beaten down over the last few days and their own prints would be mixed in among the many. It was still cold enough to keep most people in doors. It was getting late, but there were still signs of life. Folks watching their preferred late night shows. Someone a street over taking out the trash before bed. The time of night that it wasn't too unusual to see two men walking determinedly home but still late enough that there should be few people to even notice.

Dean led them around the back of the building they wanted. He'd already had a look at the layout and Sam let him take point in assigning tasks. Sam's job had been to think up as many protections as possible. Devil's traps would have been the best choice, but they were large and complex. Not exactly something you could tag a suburban household with and not get caught doing. So they settled on protective charms and symbols. A hodgepodge of work that wouldn't necessarily stop evil, but would slow it down and draw attention.

That last part was the section Sam wasn't one hundred percent sure on, but based on his research, it should cause a visual reaction on about the same level of a Fourth of July light show. Anyone still awake and in the vicinity would know something was happening, even if they didn't understand what. And they knew for a fact that there would be two Feds watching the house and would react if anything unusual happened. Might as well use the presence of the Feds to their advantage. Even demons didn't like having that much official attention.

And of course, there was always salt.

Granted, neither of them had tried laying salt lines _outside_ of a building, but there was a first time for everything. So while Sam tested out his drawing skills, Dean got to work pouring out a combination of heavy road salt and common table salt. They hoped the irregularity of the grains would make it spread easier and stay put. Especially since Dean had to cover under each of the windows quickly and without being seen.

The last step was the back porch, a small wooden structure turned grey from the elements and only about a foot off of the ground. Sam and Dean both stared at it and then each other. Covering the back door was an important element. Perhaps the only portion they could reliably do using the traditional method. The back porch was wood and provided enough cover to give someone the time to draw out a devil's trap. But there wasn't a lot of clearance between the ground and the structure and the ground was cold and damp where it wasn't still snow covered.

Dean smirked and gestured gracefully for Sam to continue his work. Sam scowled and waved both hands to indicate the distinct height difference and the ridiculousness of the very idea. Then there was a lot of violent silent finger-pointing.

The light from the window shifted and they both dropped down onto their stomachs. The silhouette of a man was visible in the window of the backdoor and they both held still until the light shifted again, growing brighter. The Feds were definitely keeping a watch out for them.

Dean punched his brother in the arm before snatching up the large permanent marker and wiggling his way under the structure. There was barely enough room for him to fit and he had to nudge himself forward by jerking and twitching each limb. It was pathetic and probably cold and muddy and disgusting. Which would have been fine with Sam, but he still had to stay down on the ground himself while he waited for him and the snow was starting to melt from his body heat and was finding its way through his outer clothes.

After what seemed like ages, he could hear the rustling sound of his brother moving again. Backing his way out may have been instinctive, but it certainly wasn't very wise. About half way his progress stopped suddenly. Sam could make out the shape of his boots trying to find traction in the mud, and there was plenty of noise, but no progress.

Sam gave him a moment. Nothing changed except for the pauses and starts of the sound of Dean flailing about. "Dean!" Sam hissed out.

"'m stuck!" Dean whispered back.

Sam nearly dropped his head in frustration but he remembered at the last moment the pile of slushy snow beneath him. He scooted himself forward, trying not to drag the snow into his collar or up his sleeves. Once he was close enough, he took a firm grip of his brother's ankles, braced his knees in the snow and tugged.

It wasn't graceful, but it was effective. There was the sound of fabric tearing, startlingly loud in the quiet of the night, and then suddenly Sam's brother came sliding out like a greased pig and made a noise about right for one.

"Cold! Cold!" Dean flipped over immediately, hands pawing at his own stomach trying to get his rucked-up shirt and jacket back down. And trying to get the snow out from underneath.

"Dumbass," Sam hissed, grabbing his arm and hauling him to his feet. They'd made enough noise to wake somebody. Certainly enough to draw the attention of a watching Fed. Sam got them both up on their feet, bent over to keep their silhouette below the railing line, and moving into the next yard over and then the one beyond that.

They stopped, sheltered in the shadows of a shed at the back end of the property. It gave them a good sightline of the back porch and Sam watched for the man's head to appear in the window again. And sure enough it did, right before the light in the kitchen was suddenly cut off. Sam watched, waiting, and eventually one darker shadow finally moved away from the window.

Dean was still mutter curses and patting at his damp front ineffectively.

"You almost got us caught," Sam told him sourly.

"Bitch," Dean replied before shifting gears. "Everything set?"

Sam shrugged. "As best as we can do. This will only work while she's at home, and the last disappearance was in public."

Dean's grumbling took on a sharper tone but Sam was used to it. Dean didn't handle frustration well and liked to share that. "It's the best we can do," he repeated stubbornly. "Nothing for it but to hunker down and wait for the bastard to show his face."

It was going to be one long cold wait.

* * *

"Shifts," Dean muttered, several hours later. His hands were tucked up into his armpits and his feet were the kind of numb that wasn't dangerous yet but sure as hell wasn't fun. March may technically count as spring, but this part of the world hadn't gotten that message. And while the shed gave the brothers some protection and they had dressed for a cold night outdoors, there was only so long a man could stand around doing nothing before he felt like his balls were going to freeze off.

"We're going to have to start taking shifts."

Sammy just nodded.

* * *

"Sheriff Brooks? Good morning. This is Agent Scully."

Mulder opened one gummy eye. That was Scully's professional polite voice. It was different enough from the more thoughtful sharp tone she used when talking with him that it brought him out of the light doze he'd been drifting along for the last couple of hours. She was standing in the kitchen, voice lowered courteously and her hair glowing in the early morning light. She continued talking, leading her side of the conversation as she paced across the patch of linoleum that delineated the separation of the two rooms.

"Everything's fine. A very quiet night…No, nothing to report…We weren't sure what might happen…At this point we can't rule anything out. That's actually why I'm calling, Sheriff. We still have concerns about the safety of Ms. Howard. Could you spare a man today to keep an eye on her at her workplace?..Yes, it has been a long night…Thank you, we appreciate the assistance…We will, thank you again. We'll check in in a few hours."

She hung up the phone and turned to face him. "Get any sleep?"

"A little," he answered, sitting up from the couch and rubbing at his face. His tie had gone crooked on him at some point in the night, but he only straightened it enough to keep it from choking him. "Sheriff's going to take over babysitting?"

"He gave us until 4pm to rest up."

"Oh, that's nice. What are we doing instead?"

Scully smiled. "I've got a list of people to talk to. Want half?"

"Sure," Mulder replied as if there was nothing he'd rather do more than chase down what was likely to be dead ends. At the moment, however, they had nothing else. The Winchester brothers hadn't shown themselves, which rather soured Mulder's mood. He had been certain they would do something in the night. Dean had seemed convinced that Sharron Howard was their best lead to the murderer.

Essentially, he and Scully had wasted the entire night…

"Are you people still here?" their hostess asked testily when she emerged from her bedroom.

…and he and Scully had made idiots out of themselves as well. At least the Sheriff sounded like he had the decency to treat their odd fixation as a viable possibility.

Mulder ignored the rest of the room and set about gathering his things. Scully was the better diplomat of the two of them and he had learned to keep his mouth shut and let her handle things. Sometimes. When they were unpleasant and he didn't want to deal with it anyway.

It didn't take much to get him ready to go out the door. But the door itself stuck slightly as he pushed it open, moving only begrudgingly and with a dry crunching noise. Mulder paused and looked down.

"You put out salt last night?" Mulder called back into the apartment, interrupting whatever it was Sharron and Scully were saying to each other. He knew the answer already, since he and Scully had been the last people in or out of this door. But it seemed the thing to ask when presented with the peculiar.

Running from nearly one end of the front porch to the other was a thick line of salt. It looked a bit like the kind of heavy road salt you saw in the streets or on sidewalks. But instead of being liberally distributed over the walk area, it was piled deeply about three inches wide and almost an inch tall.

Scully leaned over him as he crouched down to study it. "It's also on the windows," she commented calmly. This was hardly the oddest thing they had ever seen. "I'll check the back," she added, as blessedly practical as ever.

Sharron hovered closer in her wake, peeking around him to see what was so interesting. "Weird," she pronounced.

"Would one of your neighbors have maybe done this? Or the apartment office?"

She shook her head. "We're responsible for our own sidewalks. Why would anyone put out salt when it's dry? We haven't had snow or rain in a while. Oh."

He turned to look at her. That was a very distinctive 'oh'. He heard it far too often from people. "Yes?"

"Well, didn't Agent Venkman say something about salt?"

"Did he?" Mulder prompted, wishing for not the first time that he had been able to witness Dean's form of questioning a person of interest. He'd obviously done better at gaining Ms. Howard's cooperation. And apparently he'd been more talkative with her than he had Mulder.

Sharron shrugged. "I dunno. He said he might stop by. Then something about salt and not to worry about it."

"Really."

"There's salt along the back windows and door too," Scully called out to him as she came back to the front of the apartment. "And some marks the may be fresh but it's hard to tell. There's too much moisture."

"It's all slush and mud this time of year," Sharron agreed in that kind of absent tone of people talking about the weather. Not about criminals lurking around her back door. Though Mulder supposed she hadn't made the connection yet.

Mulder and Scully shared a look. They may not have had the confrontation with the Winchesters that they wanted, but they had been right that the boys had been by in the night. They hadn't given up on the case.

"We might need a library," Mulder told Scully, his plans for the day changing. "And better internet. I need to brush up on my lore."


	11. Chapter 11

"Wake up!"

The voice was screamed in his ear and accompanied by a deafening bang that had Dean jerking wildly and reaching for the nearest weapon. The empty wrapper in his lap was the only thing in his hand and his sleep befuddled brain threw it at the window with great enthusiasm and good aim even if it was about as effective as a feather.

Sam's face grinned in from the other side of the driver's side window. He had changed clothes and combed his hair at some point and looked disgustingly fresh and human. Dean felt like something scrapped of the back of someone's boot.

He scowled back, brushing the empty egg mcmuffin wrapper off as nonchalantly as ever. Typically, he would never litter inside his baby, but he didn't want to give Sam the satisfaction of drawing more attention to his first line of defense.

Sam was already moving around the car to get in. It was daylight out, though Dean wouldn't exactly call it bright. The weather forecast wasn't calling for precipitation, but it was overcast and grey. His watch said 10:12. He checked on the street out the window.

Malone was a town but still a small one. There were a few banks in the center area and Sharron worked as a teller in one of them. She'd come in for work early this morning and a police cruiser had been there the entire time. It had parked across the street, the officer splitting his time between sitting in the car idly and wandering in and out of the neighboring business to socialize. Dean had parked himself and his car at the far end of the street and kept himself busy snacking and pretending to read one of the free local papers.

Apparently he also 'pretended' to be asleep at some point. Naturally that was when Sammy arrived to relieve him.

Sam got into the car with a blast of cold air but held out a fresh cup of coffee still nice and warm. There was a paper bag in his hands as well and as long as it contained more than just green stuff, Dean was willing to be gracious and ignore his rude greeting.

"Anything interesting?"

Dean rolled his eyes and didn't bother to answer. The cup didn't feel _too_ hot in his hands so he risked a gulp. Then he needed a moment for just him and his perfectly warm coffee, heavy on the sugar, no cream, just the way the family drank it on long waits. Caffeine and sugar, everything a growing body needed to manage the mindnumbing boredom.

"You?" he finally asked.

"I think I've got another cluster of symbols identified. Looks like phonecian, and if I'm interpreting it right, I think it's for good health."

Dean stared at his brother. "Good health? Someone carved a charm for good health into our vic? Seems kind of passive aggressive if you ask me."

Sam just nodded, not rising to the bait. "That's why I'm not sure, but it does fit the pattern."

"There's a pattern?" And here he thought it was all just violence for its own sake.

Sam nodded seriously. "So far, everything that I can read, it has a trend. Concealment, containment, stability and now good health. It's not all clearly positive, but so far there's been nothing negative. It's all things that are at worst neutral and possibly even beneficial."

"Carved into the sorry hide of our guy."

"Yeah. I never claimed demons made sense. About that," Sam added. "Think you can stay awake long enough to hold down the fort for a little longer? I want to have a look around Sharron's work place."

It wasn't a bad idea. And since Sharron already knew Dean as Agent Venkman it wasn't a good idea to have him wandering about. But Sam was an unknown.

Dean gave him a look, not agreeing yet. "What did you bring me?"

"Other than hot coffee?" Sam taunted. But he caved quickly. "I got a phili-cheesesteak and fries for you, don't say I don't enable your commitment to die of clog arteries."

"Damn straight!" Dean agreed happily, smiling broadly as he snatched the bag up. He waved his brother off absently, already inhaling the lovely aroma of cheese and salty grease.

* * *

Sam shook his head as he slammed the car door shut behind him. He's brother was an idiot through and through, but he certainly enjoyed the simple pleasures in life. It was the kind of thing Sam had once found frustrating and annoying, back before he had gone to college. His brother wasn't actually stupid – no matter how he acted. And as the only person who had known what Sam's life had really been like, Sam had never been able to understand why _Dean_ hadn't been the one champing at the bit to get away, to have more to life, to take control.

A lot had changed since then. He'd lost Jess and they had both lost their father – maybe in more ways than one. Dean had almost died more than once. Sam had been dead briefly. And Dean had been truly gone and dead for six long months. Sam knew intellectually that those months had been significantly longer for Dean than they had for Sam, but at the same time it was hard to imagine.

It had been a bad six months.

So Sam might be a bit more inclined to pander to some of Dean's ridiculousness. At least when it came to simple things like stake-out food. Or which stupid themed rest stop they used. They had plenty of other things they could fight about ranging from Ruby to Lilith to when not to be suicidally heroic.

Sam shook his head as he walked away. It had been a shitty cold night, neither one of them happy with the idea of the other being caught out there alone if a demon or possibly more than one of them decided to show up.

They had learned the hard way not to underestimate what they were up against. Gone were the days when ghost was the most likely explanation. They were in the big leagues these days and the big league was kicking their ass more often than not. They couldn't afford to take chances.

Sam kept his face turned towards the window displays while he walked calmly passed the parked police car. Dean had insisted that Mulder wasn't likely to sound the alarm, but the whole situation left Sam feeling exposed and vulnerable. He couldn't argue with the evidence, however. No one looked twice at him. There'd been no news reports and no whispered gossip among the locals. At least not about them. Everyone was talking about Haymond, but in that kind of abstract sense that suggested they still had the hope that this would all pass them by. That it was an aberration. That something like this couldn't _really_ happen in a town like theirs and that there must be some other, more logical explaination as to why a man was violently murdered.

In the bank everything continued normally. It was a bit old and faded around the edges, but there were little hints of attempts to spruce it up. There were fresh flowers near the door, and what looked like complimentary coffee in the back. Sam loitered near the door, pretending to check out a display about home mortgages while he really checked out the room. It was quiet, but not empty. A few retirees but mostly business folk of one kind or another completing routine tasks. Workmen in plaid and boots were waiting in line to cash their paychecks while business types in their suits and carefully shined shoes waited to transfer funds or make deposits.

He spotted Sharron Howard working at the front counter. She was managing a cool politeness that was at least professional. But she looked tired. Dean had described her as testy and frazzled, but hot. It was a decent enough description. Sam watched her carefully as he flipped over a flyer on interest rates and pretended to study the fine print carefully.

There was something heavy about the way she looked. Like an invisible weight. She didn't look ill, exactly, but there was something stretched about her. Something dreary and almost shadowed.

Sam was probably staring rather blandly at this point but he didn't care. There was something here that he almost recognized. Almost understood.

And then it clicked.

* * *

"Dean! Dean! Dean!"

"Oh, my god, what? Are you twelve? And what the hell, keep your voice down!" Dean snapped back. He'd already finished his sandwich but he shoved the last of the fries back in the bag and out of the way as he turned to face his frantic brother. "What the hell?" he asked, figuring that covered just about everything from 'why are you such an idiot' to 'do I need my gun?'.

"I think I figured it out," Sam gushed, folding himself into the car and shifting about to face him. His face was pale but his hands were clenching and unclenching. It wasn't a good look on his brother and Dean did not have good associations with it. "It's Sharron Howard," Sam continued.

"Huh? Really? She did it? I mean, I wasn't exactly getting the sadistic murderous vibe from her, but I guess you really never know…"

"No, I mean, she's part of it," Sam said, as if that clarified things. He only got more confusing after that. "She's got this…thing. This smudge. Or, like, a stain. On her. You know?"

Dean struggled to keep up. "Like on her shirt?" he asked, 'cause yeah, that could be distracting and get a guy into trouble, but it didn't seem like the kind of thing for Sam to panic about.

"No. What? What are you talking about? Nevermind. It's the same thing I noticed about Haymond but I didn't realize it at the time. It wasn't something I ever imagined happening, but I'm sure that's what this is, Dean. I'm sure of it."

"And?" Dean replied, drawing out the word. "What exactly are you sure of?"

"Demon blood, Dean. Somehow, she's got demon blood in her but she's not a demon."

Dean stared at him. "She what?" he finally asked. 'Cause goddamn it this job just got weirder and weirder every day. And more fucked up.

"I know!" Sam replied excitedly. "I didn't realize it when we talked to Haymond. I thought there was something off about him but I didn't think much of it and then I was watching Sharron and it's the same thing. I mean, I can't be sure that's what it is, but that's what it reminds me of."

Dean kept quiet. He watched his brother ramble on about auras and demon influences and what that might mean for the two people connected to this damned case. He had to clench his own fists just to keep it together. He didn't know if he wanted to fly off the handle at Sam, kill something or just shut down entirely. Sammy was sitting there talking about how he could see demon influences like it was just a normal thing. Like it didn't mean anything was wrong in the world. Like there wasn't anything wrong with him. Dean managed to breathe in deeply through his nose and push it down enough that he didn't feel like throwing up. It still caught him off guard. Even after losing Sammy and making his deal to get him back and the forty years in hell he paid for it and it still wasn't enough to protect him – it still caught him off guard when he realized just how close to the abyss his brother was but he was getting better at learning to deal with it. To push it down. Focus on the job.

"Dean, are you listening?"

Sam was giving him that bitch face look that meant he already knew the answer to his question but wanted to rub it in Dean's face.

"Sure, I am," he replied sharply. "Demon blood. Great fun."

Sam scowled back. "Look, it's a connection at least. Can we please focus on that?" And wasn't it amazing how Sam always wanted to talk about feelings and Dean's problems but never his own fucked up shit.

Deep breaths. "All right. Where they gettin' it from?"

"If we knew that, this'd be easy. Well sort of. Other than the needing to kill a demon part."

"A demon strong enough to block out angels and get their celestial panties all in a bunch. That's some powerful mojo to stay hidden from the angel radar. How'd they do that and why go through so much effort to contaminate a couple of humans?"

"It also doesn't explain the memory loss," Sam added ever so helpfully.

"You think they're still tellin' the truth on that?"

Sam shrugged. "Why lie? It draws more attention than anything else."

Dean groaned. "Wait, does that mean the demons aren't trying to hide it or that they are? I'm confused." He complained. He hated this kind of feint-double feint bullshit. Sure, he'd used it himself a few times with decent results but it was damn annoying being on the other side.

Sam stopped talking so fast his mouth snapped shut. It was perhaps the first time since he got into the car that he was completely still. It couldn't last.

"Oh my god."

And now his baby brother sounded a bit hysterical. Which was maybe funny under other circumstance but right now probably meant he was going to say something Dean really wasn't going to like.

"They don't know they've ingested it. Dean, some demon did this to them and they don't even know it. It's the only explaination for the memory lost. If they had gone willing, if they had known it had happened, surely we would have picked up on something from them. But the lost time, the confusion, the out of character behavior – that all points to possession. The demons did this to them without their knowledge."

Dean grimaced. "Okay, that's disgusting. Agreed. But not the worst thing we've ever had to deal with, though, right?" Because he certainly didn't expect Sam of all people to act like this was the end of the world. Nasty as all get out and wrong on so many levels, but it wasn't going to kill them. Hopefully.

"Dean! They don't know it happened!" Sam repeated. "What if that means it's happened to other people and they don't know about it either?"

And okay, not good. "Wouldn't they also have disappeared or something?"

"Maybe they did and no one noticed."

Dean grimaced. "That's a big maybe," he groused. But the possibility was there and Sam had good instincts for this kind of thing. Whatever was happening in this town, it wasn't finished with yet, that much was clear. If they had been successful at whatever it was they were trying to do then either the brothers or the angels would know. Which meant the demons were still in town and likely still fucking around with people.

Sharron Howard and Bill Haymond had nothing in common as far as they could tell. It was a small town, so they couldn't say definitively that there was no connection, but nothing in their research had given them even a hint. Which mean they had likely been chosen at random. And if demons had picked two people at random, there was a good chance there'd be more.

"Alright, alright" Dean finally agreed. "Let's start with the most obvious. Homeless shelters and soup kitchens. Whatever they've got here that passes as that. See if they've got some kind of outreach center or some shit. And bars. Lots of pathetic people in bars. We need to find out who could have disappeared for 24 hours and no one notice."

Sam rolled his eyes. "I can guess which of those you'd prefer."

Dean grinned. "You're the people person, Sammy. People trust you and want to talking about feelings and saving the world and sunshine or whatever. Me? I'm more the surly drunk type."


	12. Chapter 12

"Nothing?"

"Nothing," Scully confirmed. She held up the print out as proof, though most of it was in jargon and wouldn't have meant much to Mulder. It had been nearly 48 hours since they had arrived in town. The bloodwork she had sent off had been put through as a rush job, but so far everything had some back negative. There were a few more tests they were still running that would take longer, but the likelihood of any of those being relevant was slim.

48 hours in town and all they had was a whole lot of nothing.

Sharron Howard had been under surveillance ever since her visit from the Winchesters, but other than the salt around her house, there hadn't been any sign that the brothers had any interest in her. In fact, they hadn't seen the brothers at all – something that alarmed Scully immensely. This plan of Mulder's to use the Winchester brothers to find out what was really happening in the town of Malone was dependent on the brothers being innocent and leading them to the real killer. If they'd left town, neither was very likely.

But Mulder was committed, the way he always was when some idea got stuck in his head. He'd spent most of the time they had been waiting going through what he affectionately called lore. Most of it seemed dependent on fairytales of one form or another, including a heavy dose of Christian superstition. Scully hadn't had this many conversations about the heavenly bodies and damned souls since her catholic school days. Except even then the nuns had treated it more as a philosophical belief than hard fact. But Mulder never did anything by halves and had started more than one debate about the practical elements of satanic practices – and, of course, about salt.

Scully had heard more about salt, salt lines and protective circles than she had ever thought was possible.

But even that shiny new toy could only keep Mulder occupied for so long. Research was all well and good, but they were in the middle of a case and they had hoped for a new lead by now. The lack left both of them on edge.

Mulder slouched over in his chair and dropped his head onto his folded arms. "So much for that."

"You thought we'd find something?" she replied, somewhat surprised.

Mulder shrugged without raising his head. His voice was muffled but she was able to make out the words. "It was either that or demonic interference." He raised his head enough to give her a wry grin well aware of what she thought of the Winchesters' beliefs. "I'm kidding. Mostly. But it would have been a good start to figuring out what's really happening. I'm still not ruling out drugs or some other kind of chemical interference. We might just not have a proper test for it if it's an unknown chemical that's affect these people."

Scully rolled her eyes. "Despite what you may think, Mulder, creating a compound complex enough to achieve the kind of results we're talking about would be extremely difficult. Doing so without leaving a trace would be all but impossible."

"We do the impossible ever day!" he replied in a burst of cheer that was short lived. Neither of them felt very impossible lately. Mostly they'd been stuck going over the same information time and time again.

"Think the Winchester's are having better luck than we are?" Mulder asked suddenly.

"Think they're still in town?" Scully shot back but then sighed. "We'd have a much better idea of what they were doing if we told the Sheriff to keep an eye out for them."

Mulder was already shaking his head no. "We do that and we'll have to tell him why and who they are. And even if we didn't, they're in the system enough he might make the connection."

"Alright. But how do _we_ find them?"

Mulder dug in his pocket and pulled out his new temporary phone. He had his old number programed into it and once more hit call. He'd tried calling it over and over again, just about every time he came up for air from his binge researching. It was a ridiculously slim chance but he couldn't seem to help himself from grasping after it.

And damn it if Scully didn't hold her breath for just a second, waiting to see if it would ring or go straight to voicemail.

"Shit," Mulder muttered, ending the call and dropping his head down once more.

This wasn't getting them anywhere. They might as well take a break. Maybe get some food and some rest before picking it up again. Sometimes a little distance helped. It was certainly the more healthy way of dealing with their job. But before she could start that argument with Mulder, his phone suddenly rang.

He sat up like an electric shock had traveled through it to him. He had given the number to very few people. The only other people who might have it would be anyone with caller ID that he had tried to contact.

He snatched it back up. "Hello?" he demanded. His face was open and clearly hopeful. Then he deflated, slumping down in his seat with a frown. "Yes?" he replied dully. "What can I do for you, Sheriff?"

That had Scully's attention even if Mulder still looked put out that it wasn't his favorite wanted felons. But whatever the Sheriff said next must have been as interesting because Mulder jolted in his seat once more, his face professionally blank but his body tense.

"Yes…Yes…We'll be there right away," he said before hanging up suddenly. He didn't ask any questions and Mulder always had questions. That was how Scully knew it wasn't going to be good.

He was already up and moving, grabbing his coat and checking that he had all of his equipment – including his gun. Scully followed suit seamlessly, knowing the importance of time and a quick reaction. They were already moving out of their temporary office before he filled her in.

"We've got another body."

Scully flinched but kept up with Mulder's ground eating stride. _That_ was not the new lead she had been hoping for.

* * *

"Family called us about two hours ago," the Sheriff explained. He was standing by the abandoned car, a notebook in hand even though he didn't look at it as he gave his report. Small versions of floodlights had already been set up, angled like a spot light on the vehicle. The car was mostly off the road, hanging on the edge of the shoulder. The road flares were still burning on the other side as another officer stood ready to direct any possible cars around the scene. It wasn't a busy road by any stretch of the imagination, but there were so few in this region that each one was too important to close entirely.

Scully was crouched down by the open driver's side door examining the body still seated at the wheel. She had switched out her regular gloves for clinical ones as she careful checked different parts of the body for information.

Mulder, knowing where he could help and where he couldn't, hung back by the Sheriff. "Two hours ago?" he demanded. Two hours was a long time. They might have been able to help if they had known. He didn't know _how_ they would have helped, but he hated being the last to know something was happening.

The Sheriff didn't get defensive even though Mulder knew his tone had to have been sharp, and if you listened to Scully, probably condescending. "We've had four reports of 'missing' people today alone," the Sheriff replied. "One was at work, where he was supposed to be. One had a flat tire, which my man assisted with before sending him home and the last had gone to the grocery store without telling her husband. Word has gotten out, Agent Mulder, and I have a town of very worried people. We've been following up each call as soon as reasonably possible."

Mulder managed to bite his tongue enough not to point out the failure there and the hefty price that came with it. There would be plenty of time for that later.

"What did the family say?" he asked instead.

"Mr. Nelson came home from work on time, spoke with his wife, changed clothes and took the dog with him to go pick up their eldest daughter from a friend's house. All normal for the family. He left home at about 1800, maybe a little bit before. At 1900 the daughter called home. Mr. Nelson still hadn't arrived and wasn't answering his phone. The wife called us not long after that. She's waiting on us to contact her back." The Sheriff managed to keep his tone carefully controlled right up until the end of his report. He wasn't new to the job and had a decent grip on how to compartmentalize under pressure. Mulder could appreciate that and hoped it held up as things progressed. Because things were certainly bound to get worse.

"Where's the dog?"

The Sheriff's face didn't change. "Trunk."

The night wasn't quiet by any means, there was the sound of idling police cars and quiet voices and rustling trees, but there was no noise from the trunk.

"Right. Let's take a look at that," Mulder replied. Scully had the human remains in her expert care. He might as well take a look at their lupine evidence. The trunk was already popped, but someone had gently lowered the lid back down till it was bobbing just above the latch. Mulder didn't bother changing his gloves before nudging it back up, the movement kicking on the light. Mr. Nelson had owned what looked like a Labrador. The dog's neck was clearly broken, lying oddly so that the half lidded eyes faced up. There was no other sign of trauma. The animal's leash was still connect to its collar, bright red and tangled carelessly with the rest of the body. There was no other sign of violence but also no care given to how the dog had been loaded.

Mulder lowered the trunk back down to its resting spot and moved over to hover by Scully's shoulder. "Dead dog in the trunk. Broken neck."

Scully's hands didn't even pause. She was busy gently checking Mr. Nelson's hands and wrists, manipulating the fabric of his jacket enough to get a clear view. "Our vic was killed in a similar manner." The head was drooped forward as if the man had simply drifted off. But he took her word on it. "No other signs of trauma. Seatbelt is in place and doesn't look disturbed or twisted in any way. Hands are clean, both were resting palms up in his lap. But Mulder," she broke off, her voice quiet enough that he had to lean in towards the car. "Look at his feet. His right foot is still on the brake, his left on the clutch. They didn't even slide off to the side."

Mulder looked at the body, trying to read as much as he could from the slumped shoulders and lax face. "So it happened fast."

"Fast and clean."

Mulder moved to the back door and peered inside. The back seat was covered in books, papers, plastic shopping bags, one pink sweater and what looked like a lacrosse stick. There was a clear space on the other side, the foot-well over there covered in a layer of dried mud and salt from melted snow and what looked like a pair of children's galoshes. But there was barely enough space in the back for a small child, and even then only on the far side. "No one sat behind him," Mulder told her.

"Next to him would have caused more of a disturbance."

Mulder nodded, walking around the car slowly hoping for something else out of place to catch his attention. "It doesn't match the previous body."

"No," Scully agreed easily. "But then again, we do have a suspect known for changing his method," she added as she stood up, apparently done with examining Mr. Nelson. Their eyes met over the car and neither of them were happy. Mulder hoped he made it quite clear with his silent look that he didn't appreciate her dragging out such theories in front of outsiders and that he certainly did not agree that that was a valid explanation of the situation and couldn't she try to have a little more faith? Scully's own narrow-eyed expression was certainly very clear that she thought he was reckless and being foolish and she was not going to follow along blindly if she thought it violated her ethics.

Neither of them said a word however and she moved to the back to have a look at the animal.

It was too much to hope that the Sheriff might have been distracted elsewhere and not noticed their little exchange.

"There's a suspect?" he demanded, suddenly not sounding as mild mannered and calmly detached as he had a moment before.

Mulder scrambled. He couldn't say definitively that it wasn't the Winchesters, but he knew they had reasonable doubt, and he did _not_ want to be sic'ing the local law on the brothers before he had his answers. "Not a suspect so much as a profile," he demurred. "There are certain elements that are indicative of previous cases we have seen where the suspect believed there to be…unworldly elements at play." He was not going to say the word satanic. Not to a small town Sheriff. It would be tantamount to starting a panic.

"Mulder!"

Saved by Scully. He turned away quickly and rejoined her by the back of the car. She had two fingers in the dog's mouth and seemed to be having some difficulty getting its upper lip to raise. "Look at this, Mulder," she told him. "Rigor is already setting in."

Mulder wasn't an expert, but he could follow the basics. "Mr. Nelson's only been missing for about three to four hours."

"Which meant the dog would have had to have been killed almost immediately after leaving the house."

"Well, that helps establish a timeline."

"No, it doesn't," she disagreed.

"Oh?" Mulder couldn't help but smile a bit. When Scully said the science didn't make snese that usually meant they were on to something. "What's the issue?"

"Mulder, Mr. Nelson's only been dead for a little over an hour, two tops. This dog was killed much earlier than that. Why would a victim have his dead dog in the trunk? And then drive around for another couple of hours before calmly letting himself be killed on the side of the road?"

"Maybe he didn't know the dog was in there."

Scully scowled. "And just where did he think the dog was, Mulder? You don't just misplace an animal this size the way you do an errant glove. He would have noticed it missing."

"Okay," Mulder agreed, sort of enjoying being the straight man for this conversation. "What if he was looking for it? It got loose or something?"

"On the other side of town from where he started? This isn't a city subdivision. We're talking about serious terrain between here and there."

Mulder shrugged. "Okay, I've got nothing."

Scully straightened up, suddenly done with her examination. She stared off into the darkness on the other side of the road as she mentally reviewed her findings. Mulder waited, as patiently as he could, for her to hurry up and share her final conclusions.

"Mulder. This is the second body-"

"Third if you count the dog!'

"- the second body," she repeated, "with no sign of resistance or struggle or even alarm. Despite the violence of the attacks and the clear indications that the victims should have been in distress prior to being killed." She finally paused to look over at him. "This body is fresher and we can get lab samples sent right away, but somehow, Mulder, I suspect they will also come back negative."

Mulder managed a strained smile. "It is a weird one."

Scully glanced over at the Sheriff. He was watching them closely, but at least hadn't been rude enough to obviously hover. "Mulder, I think you know where my thoughts are on this one. It was one thing to wait and see when we thought we had this contained to one possible victim. We have to be practical about this. Another man is dead and there's a good chance we know who's responsible."

"Scully, we don't _know_ anything!"

"Exactly! We don't know _anything_ and hence have to treat everything as suspect!"

Mulder stepped in closer, angling his body to try to keep this conversation as private as possible. "If you tell the Sheriff that you think the Winchesters did this and we'll have a manhunt on our hands in minutes. And not the kind inclined to use caution. You heard the Sheriff, people are scared. We've seen what happens with things like this. If they aren't guilty, if they are in fact trying to help, and we get them shot or worse…"

"We can't stand by and do nothing, Mulder. You don't know where they are or what they've been up to in the last 48 hours."

"Let me try calling again," Mulder argued, digging into his coat pocket for his phone.

Scully sighed loudly. Pointedly. "That's not going to do any good, Mulder. They aren't-"

The phone started ringing suddenly and they both stopped. Mulder finished pulling it out and looked at the display. It was a number he already had programed in. MY OLD PHONE – PICK UP. The caps had been entirely necessary and he was careful not to fumble with the phone as he answered it. "Hello?" he said cautiously, trying to keep his tone level as he and Scully stared at each other.

There was a pause, then a rough voice. "Hello?"

"Who is this?" Mulder prompted, even though he knew the answer. He recognized the voice.

"Who the hell is this?" was the demand back and Mulder couldn't help it, he grinned a bit.

"You called me, Dean," he answered.

"Fox Mulder, right?" was the grumbled response. "And hey, I didn't say it was me."

Mulder pause for a moment to let that sink in. "You're surprisingly bad at this."

"Shuddup," he snapped back before grumbling a muffled 'smartass.' "Look, we've, um, we've got a problem."

Mulder raised his eyebrows. "And you called me? With my phone, might I point out."

"I'm borrowing. I was going to see if your partner's number was in here, but wouldn't ya know, I turn the thing on and there's a couple dozen missed calls from the same number. I fgured it must be you. So, yeah. I'm callin' back. Look, were you serious? I mean about the wanted to help out bit. 'Cause if that was just some psycho-babble bullshit I've got better things to waste my time on. This case is turning into a real shitstorm."

"That's one way of putting it." Mulder watched Scully closely as he asked, "Dean, where were you over the last five hours?"

"Huh?"

"It's a simple question."

"I'm not tellin' ya where we're at. Do I look stupid? You're still a fuckin' Fed."

Mulder rolled his eyes. "Yes, thank you. I hadn't noticed. I didn't ask where you are now _currently_ , I asked where were you over the last five hours? I want details, Dean. Then we can talk."

'Well, fuck. I dunno. We've been driving from one end of this damn town to another. Um, a place called Wellington's. A gas station. A neighborhood over by the middle school. We sat in the parking lot at K-Mart for a while. What the hell does it matter?"

"How about further south?"

"Route 30?" Dean answered. It was the main road leading due south and quite a bit west from where their crime scene was.

"How about Teboville road?"

"TVville road? Really? They got a road named that here? Well, damn. We saw a TV road in a Fredericksburg one time. Sam, which state was that?" The last part was muffled again and Mulder was able to make out another voice replying sharply. At least that confirmed that the two of them were together.

"Dean," Mulder said sharply. "I'm standing by a dead body on Teboville road and I need to give my partner one damn good reason why you aren't the one who put it here."

"Goddamn mother fucking shit! Sam, the sonofabitch's on the move. South, near – what road?" The last part was the only part directed to Mulder. There was the sound of rustling in the background and something loudly banging into something else.

"Te-bo-ville."

"Who?"

Scully was starting to look a little murderous herself and Mulder flashed her a quick smile. "Now, Dean, you know I can't give that kind of information out over the phone. Why don't we-"

"I've got a list of about twenty people, shithead. I need to know if this one's on it or if we missed somebody."

Mulder stopped smiling, reaching out to nudge Scully's shoulder carefully. "What list?" he asked. Scully's eyes widened and they both held perfectly still.

"Damn it, the one Sam and I have been trying to put together. Whatever happened to Haymond and Howard, it's been happening to other people. LOTS of other people. We just can't figure out how the hell it's been happening. They ain't got nothing in common, or a couple of them do but not the rest. At least four of them have time missing that we know of and another couple wouldn't know the difference if they did or not. So I'm assuming there's a fucking pattern. Now what's the name?"

Mulder held the phone away from his face and kept his voice low, very aware of how easy it was to overhear on the other end of the line. "Scully, they think they've found a connection. He's panicked."

She frowned but kept any snarky comments to herself. "How panicked?"

Mulder considered the question. "Not frightened panicked. Angry. Frustrated?"

She deliberated over that. Fear told you a lot about a person. What they valued. What made them feel weak and out of control. What stressed them. It was probably the most honest reaction they were likely to get.

"Oi! You there?" the tinny voice from the phone complained, but Mulder was waiting. He knew the choice he wanted to make but he wanted Scully on board as well. She was always the one he needed to convince first before he had any hope of convincing anyone else.

Finally she nodded, firmly, a decision reached and without hesitation.

"Nelson."

Dean cut off sharply at the name. The phone was quite for a moment, no sound of rustling or of Sam in the background. "The husband or the wife?" Dean finally asked.

Damn it. That was not the answer Mulder wanted. "Husband," he admitted, wanting to know what Dean would say next.

"Get somebody over the wife's. More than one somebody. Don't leave her alone with any one person, even someone trusted."

Mulder covered the phone. "Get the Sheriff, make sure more than one person is with her at all times. Suspect might be a cop or someone else she'd trust."

Scully, bless her, just nodded and swiftly moved away. She'd have the Sheriff in hand and moving on it in no time.

"Dean, where are you?"

"Doesn't matter," was the sharp reply.

"People are dying, Dean. I need to know why. I need to know how to stop it," he said, then added on "you called me, remember?"

"Fuck. Right. Um. That list?" he asked, sounding almost hesitant behind the gruffness. "You FBI types got some magic way of figurin' out if a group of people have anything in common?"

"Yes, Dean, we FBI types have magic like that. It's called records. It mostly involves a bunch of computer geeks and long hours."

"Whatever. I give you list, you figure out where they've been or who they've all met or something. Because we've got a lot of them, but none of them are new, ya know? Whatever happened initially has already happened. Nobody's pinging on the old radar that didn't before. So the opening act of this little shitshow happened before we got here. If we figure out what happened then, maybe we can find the bastard now."

"You still haven't told me what they all _do_ have in common. What do you mean pinging? Why them?"

Dean huffed. "Trust me, you don't wanna know."

"We've had this conversation before, Dean."

"Yeah, and I punched ya," was the cheeky response, not at all apologetic.

"And I _listened_ ," Mulder replied. Sure, he thought Dean was nuts – or at the very least greatly misguided – but he had listened. He was trying to understand. It was probably more than the Winchester brothers would ever get.

Dean seemed to think about it for a moment since he didn't hang up but didn't say anything either. Finally he replied, "word is you're nuttier than a fruit cake, Agent Mulder."

And that had him grinning broadly, something that was maybe very out of place at a crime scene and with an unknown threat hanging over their heads. "But you have heard of me."

Surprisingly, he got the laugh he had been looking for. It was an unexpected bonus. Dean didn't seem like the kind of guy who laughed frequently and Mulder had to wonder what that said about either the quality of their rapport or the questionability of Mulder's sense of humor.

"Granted," Dean announced magnanimously. "How about this for now, ya basket case. Somehow, each of these people was…dosed with something. Something weird as fuck."

"Something that would cause memory loss?" Mulder asked quickly. He started waving at Scully. They had to get that blood sample and they had to get it now. In duplicate. And maybe use more than one lab.

But Dean snorted. "I doubt it. No, we're pretty sure that's from somethin' else. Fuckin' demons," Dean muttered grumpily. "No, this is something bigger and more fucked up than usual. We haven't figured out what their end game is yet, but they've got a large chunk of this town contaminate for some reason, and I'm guessin' it's not a good one.

Which made about as much sense as anything else in this conversation. "Where do you want to meet?" Mulder asked instead. Dean had given him some clues and they could start there. The secret was figuring out what was useful in the rambling theories and curse words. Demons and contamination seemed to be a common thread, and it would fit some of the more alarmists texts he had been reading.

"Meet? What the hell? No way, man. We're emailing this shit to you. Sammy can set up a nice burner account and everything."

"Dean, that's not enough and you know it. If we're going to stop this, we can't waste time chasing each other. What if someone else gets killed in the mean time?" And yes, Mulder was very well aware that this was Scully's own argument he was regurgitating. But hey, it was a good one. Very effective.

"I figure we've got about 24 hours, give or take."

And really, it was times like this that even Mulder started to question the Winchester's involvement. "And how do you know that?" he asked quietly.

Dean's voice was suddenly very smug. "Pat Bates doesn't remember anything from after work to the next morning the day after Howard walked out of work. That puts Haymond, Howard and Bates all about 24 hours apart. That leaves a gap of yesterday, but then we've got Nelson today. How long was he missing? Long enough to have missed a few hours? Anybody talk to him during that time? 'Cause I betcha he was acting aggressive and peculiar. Like he was a different person. And I bet you, if he had lived, he wouldn't have remembered a damn thing."

"How do you know this, Dean?" It didn't matter if it was true. Dean believed it was. And it was very detailed and specific. Exactly the kind of arbitrary pattern people had been looking for in the Winchester case for years. A method to the madness that had seemed too random to be legitimate.

"Seen it," Dean grunted. "Way too much. And with what these people have been drinkin', there's only one kind of source." Suddenly he laughed. "Think invasion of the body snatchers, Mr. Fed. Close enough to the truth."

"You're really annoying," Mulder complained. He had more questions now, not less.

Dean laughed lightly. "I'm good at that. You find us a connection. Then we'll talk," he declared before hanging up.


	13. Chapter 13

As promised, Sam Winchester sent them a detailed list from an address that was more numbers than letters. There were 22 names total, including Haymond, Howard and both Nelsons. The boys had made notes next to most of the names. There were the ones they had confirmed were missing time. Others were marked as uncooperative – and Mulder had no trouble imagining why. Dean at least was not very patient and probably had the people skills of a frat boy. A few had question marks next to them and no other information, but something about them had caught the boys' attention and gotten those names added to the list. Three were labeled as missing.

That last part was what worried Mulder the most. He managed to ask the Sheriff about it, trying to make it sound like they thought those people might have seen Mr. Nelson shortly before his death. It had been a thin excuse, made only worse when the Sheriff informed them that all three were what was euphemistically called footloose. Each of them had been pulled in for either drugs or drunk and disorderly at one point, but the Sheriff insisted they were harmless and probably off somewhere sleeping off the booze from the night before. But he promised to check.

Mulder figured there was little point this late in the game.

He and Scully spent the evening calling in every contact they had for information and a thorough trend analysis. Which didn't add up to much. Residents of Malone and the surrounding area didn't exactly leave a large digital or legal footprint. There were some basic records (useless), internet activity (Amazon, Amazon, porn and more Amazon) and credit cards. Cash was still common in this part of the world but there were times when people preferred the convenience of a credit card.

Like when paying for a nice steak dinner at a place called Riverside.

It wasn't actually on the side of a river, but some enterprising soul had put in a little pond that wrapped around the front entrance and generously labeled it a river. There was even a tiny foot bridge that crossed it at the narrow point. Other than that, the building was respectable. The roof was pitched and angled with an eye towards aesthetics and there was a small wrap around porch that probably saw good use in fair weather. Right now it still had ice and snow on it and the drive was overdue for a shoveling.

Mulder guided the car carefully up near the front. It was still midmorning and the place was likely closed. He and Scully stared out at it from the warmth and safety of the car.

"Doesn't look like the source of supernatural drugging, does it? Not unless we're talking about some bad food poisoning."

"Nine of the people on the list were here for dinner February 28th."

"Madri Gras," Mulder added. When she gave him a look, he smirked back. "Google." Because it was always good to check these things. You never knew when a day was the anniversary of something significant or the one night in the next however-many-hundreds-of-years that the moon turned green or something.

"Let's go take a look," he added before shutting off the car and getting out.

"I'm surprised at you, Mulder," Scully told him as they picked their way over the unkempt parking area. "I would have thought you would have jumped at the chance at meeting with the Winchesters first. This is a legitimately good lead. You likely could have convinced them to meet with us."

"And lose our advantage? Come on, Scully. This is exactly what we need to prove once and for all whether the Winchesters are a threat or not."

"I noticed you aren't trying to prove their sanity," she pointed out dryly. "You also seem to think we're going to find our smoking gun here."

"That would be nice," Mulder agreed, nearly slipping off the front step. "But I'd settle for information the Winchesters _don't_ have before us. Then we can set up a meet and get a better understanding of exactly what we're dealing with."

"Confronting their delusions might be dangerous, Mulder. Even if they are honestly trying to help other people. We're talking about an all-encompassing, isolating world view that they have literally grown up with and lived every day of their lives. No one wants to have their very existence questioned."

Mulder shrugged. He waited until the two of them were standing shoulder to shoulder before knocking loudly on the front door. There were two cars parked along the side, so someone from the staff must be here already. "Then we don't try to poke holes in their world view. But it would be nice to have a better understanding of it ourselves. Then we can figure out what's causing it."

"If something's causing it," she muttered, but kept it mostly to herself as they heard footsteps coming.

The door opened a crack and a young woman peered out as if it were the middle of the night and a questionable neighborhood. Mulder did his best to smile charmingly, but it always felt sort of plastic and ridiculous on him. He held up his badge. "Agent Fox Mulder. Can we come in?"

The woman didn't even look at the badge. "Not open yet," she replied sharply and started to shut the door.

Mulder stopped it with one hand. "Yeah, we figured," he answered, hoping he didn't sound as exasperated as he felt. "We're FBI Agents," he clarified as if that shouldn't have been painfully obvious. "We need to talk to someone here. Maybe the manager?" he tried, hoping this was just a surly waitress.

"Why?"

Mulder glanced over at this partner, looking for some back up here. Because he was going to start saying sarcastic things back if the girl kept up the disgruntled employee routine.

Scully's own jaw looked a bit tight. "Because we're investigating the two recent murders in this town and we have good reason to need to speak to someone at this facility. It should only take a moment. Talking with us now will certainly be significantly faster and less public than if we have to come back in a much more thorough and official manner."

That message seemed to sink through, despite its formality. The young woman glared at them for a moment longer before jerking the door open silently. The room beyond was still dark, thin light coming from the windows making the tables and chairs beyond barely visible. The woman was out of sight as well, and Mulder step in carefully to find her hovering more behind the door than beside it. But she let both of them in and muttered something about waiting before disappearing through a side door.

Waiting wasn't something Mulder did well, so he started walking around the room. There wasn't much to look at. Solid wood tables were evenly spaced across the room, each with its own small glass gas lantern. A stone fireplace filled the back wall, the mantle covered with old pictures and dust. The floor over by the bar was a bit sticky when he walked over it, and he saw bits of glass when he looked down. Even a couple of whole chunks tucked negligently against the bottom of the bar.

"Nice place," he muttered. "Could use a decent cleaning though."

Scully hadn't moved from her spot, but her eyes were slowly tracking over the room. "Quiet for this time of day. I guess they don't serve lunch."

"Sign out front said they did."

"Not open yet!" the young woman snapped as she walked back into the room.

Mulder held up his hands in what was supposed to be placating manner but probably came off a bit more sarcastic. Talk about surly. And she had the glare to go along with it. "Is the manager in?" he asked.

"No."

Scully raised an eyebrow, her own temper coming out quietly in the sharpness of her voice. "Supervisor, then?"

"No."

"How about anyone other than you?" Mulder replied.

There was a pause, then "No." She didn't even bother trying to make it sound believable. She just glared at them from her spot by the door, arms crossed.

Mulder and Scully shared a look. They didn't have a search warrant, not yet. They hadn't thought they'd need one. The plan had been to speak quietly with the restaurant before they opened for business. They had hoped to find the staff much more accommodating of having the necessary conversation without having to make a public production out of it. This obstinacy was as unexpected as it was stymying.

"Mr. Joseph Jacobson is listed as the owner of this establishment," Scully said, switching methods seamlessly. "Where is he?"

The woman said nothing. There was no twitch, no frown of confusion. Just stony silence.

"Two murder victims are linked to this restaurant," Scully warned her. "They dined here the same night. That's a strong argument for a direction connection between this place and an active murder investigation. Do you understand the seriousness of this situation?"

"Do you?" the woman snapped back. She shifted and Mulder found himself moving to mimic her – arms dropping to his sides, feet moving shoulder width apart. The woman sneered at them, a face that would have been plain and common twisting as she all but snarled at them. "I think you ought to leave. Now."

Scully held her ground, bless her. Her eyes didn't even twitch towards Mulder as he side stepped to put himself closer to the other side of the suddenly aggressive waitress. "We're in the middle of a murder investigation. A multiple murder investigation. We're not going to just walk away from that and it would be in your best interest to-"

"Fine!" the woman barked out. "What do I care?'

And then the woman lunged towards Scully.

It caught both of them off guard. A physical confrontation had been the last thing either of them had expected, despite the woman's clear hostility. The woman was even shorter than Scully, at most 25 years old and had the slight soft roundness that Mulder associated with middle America and shopping malls. Not with brawling.

Mulder moved forward. He trusted Scully to manager her own self-defense, but he had height and weight on his side and that gave him the leverage to make holding the other woman back an easy task. But she could move faster than he would have expected. Faster than Scully could. She had one hand wrapped around Scully's throat before either of them could do more than jerk into motion. Scully's body twisted, both arms coming up to break the hold, but the woman just _lifted_ and held her one-handed by the throat. In a grip that tightened effortlessly despite Scully's best efforts.

Not good. And not normal. And Mulder was done playing around. He drew his gun, still moving so he had a clear shot that wouldn't risk hitting Scully and shouted at the woman to back off. The angle still wasn't' good, certainly nowhere near as safe as Mulder would want but Scully's face was already turning colors and the woman was showing absolutely no strain at holding someone her own weight off of the floor as negligently as a doll.

The woman didn't even flinch at the sight of his gun. Instead, she smiled slowly. "Oops. Poor little agent man. I think you've got this backwards. Why don't you drop it?" The woman jerked her free hand. It was empty and seemingly meaningless until the table in front of Mulder flew up onto its side and straight into him. The blow caught him across the arms and his knees, a sudden sharp pain that was enough on its own to knock him off his feet if the sheer force alone hadn't already sent him careening back into the table behind him. Mulder topped back over it, falling to the ground and banging more limbs on the way down. His gun had dropped somewhere in between. He rolled over immediately, looking for it and trying to see the next blow before it came.

He hadn't seen the first one coming, but that didn't stop him from trying.

The woman was laughing now, suddenly sounding as carefree and mild as she looked and not the sharp, hostile edge of before. Apparently, throwing people around made her less grumpy.

"I'd stay down if I were you," she commented. "Not that it will do you any good, but it might make things less painful. You should have left. We would have let you live a little longer if you had. But needs must and all that and we can't afford to have little ants like you running around calling attention to things you don't understand."

Mulder crawled forward, eyes still scanning for his gun while at the same time trying to keep his head down and behind the thin cover of the table and chairs. He could see Scully's feet kicking, occasionally landing a blow on the woman's legs. Blows that had to have been sharp and desperate but were as effective as a child's.

He finally spotted his gun and scrambled to get his feet under him and to propel himself the last few yards to snatch it up. He didn't hesitate twice. He lurched up from behind his cover and fired. The first one missed, too wide the direction thankfully away from Scully. The second one clipped the strange woman's head, shattering the outside edge of her skull and sending blood and bits flying as far as the bar.

It wasn't enough. The woman cursed and yelled but stayed on her feet. A chunk of her head was missing but she still had the strength to toss Scully against the wall and turn to face him.

"Goddamn it, that fucking hurt," the woman snarled. One hand came up to prod at the wound, making no attempt to stop the bleeding. In fact, it looked more like she was trying to straighten her hair than worry about the hole in her head.

She should have been dead. Or at least, close enough that it was only a metter of time. Instead she was walking towards Mulder, sneering and covered in her own blood. "You're going to regret that. I was going to just kill you, but now I seem to need a new body. An FBI agent should do nicely."

Mulder fired off another round, catching her in the chest. Even as he fired, he was retreating, backing up in stumbling steps, trying to put as much distance between himself and the thing in front of him. Dean's comments from earlier, about body snatchers, raced through his mind and brought with them a very real, visceral fear.

The woman's body jerked each time a bullet made impact, but she didn't stop walking toward him and she didn't stop smiling pleasantly. "That's not going to be enough," she cooed.

"How about this then?' someone yelled from Mulder's right and a larger caliber round sounded off. Shotgun, Mulder recognized. As an agent, he was expected to range test with shotguns in addition to his personal sidearm and he recognized the distict sound of buckshot. The load caught the woman full in the chest and this time she truly did scream as if she had been shot. Her body curled in protectively even though visually the damage did not look nearly as severe as he would have expected. Mulder fired once more, just in case, catching her in cap of her shoulder with a sickening crunch.

"Wait!"

Mulder's head snapped around to find Sam Winchester standing by the front door, shotgun still pointed at the woman but his attention focused on Mulder. 'Wait for what?' Mulder wanted to demand. He'd already shot her in the head and that still didn't put her down. Whatever she was, whatever was going on, shooting it seemed like a very good idea.

But when he looked back, he realized it wasn't her Sam didn't want him shooting. Mulder had just enough time to see Dean come slinking out from behind the bar before the man shoved some kind of hunting knife through the woman's back and up into her ribcage. There was a sudden glow from the point of impact, like a light had been turned on underneath her skin. Her body spasmed, head snapping up and mouth opening in a scream. Her eyes were pure black. No iris, no white, just a complete black void. Then she slumped over, falling to the ground at Dean Winchester's feet.

His face was grim. "Believe me know?" he said, but there was nothing proud or pleased about his voice. Just resigned.

Mulder didn't bother to answer. Instead he moved immediately to his partner. Scully hadn't said anything since she went down, but he thought he saw her moving since she was thrown. She had managed to push herself up against a wall, her face still red and blotchy and her neck vividly striped with marks, but she had her gun out in one hand, laying limply in her lap as she struggled to breathe normally.

Mulder hadn't put his gun away yet either, but he figured the brothers weren't likely to shoot him in the back.

"You okay?" he asked. He crouched down beside her, giving her an arm to lean on so she could bend over and suck in great deep breaths.

"I'll live," she replied, sounding awful.

"Sam!" Dean barked out. "Stay with them. I'll clear the rest."

Sam moved into view, still holding the shotgun at the ready. He was scowling at his brother as the other man darted towards the door to the back, but he didn't move from standing over the two of them.

The woman had been lying about no one else being there. Mulder was sure of it. "Go!" he ordered, catching Sam's eye. "We're fine."

It wasn't much of an argument and Mulder wasn't even sure if it was true, but Sam didn't need much to convince him. He turned sharply and hurried after his brother, priorities clear.

Mulder split his attention between supporting Scully and monitoring the room. He could hear the thundering of the brothers' boots on wooden floors and the shotgun firing again. Scully's grip on her weapon tightened. She looked up enough to make it clear she could manage.

Mulder gave her a strained grin back. "Guess they're not completely crazy." It was a reassuring thought, though he could have lived without finding out the hard way.

* * *

Dean all but threw himself around the corner and down the hallway. He had Ruby's knife in one hand and a gun still in its hostler. The latter wasn't going to do him much good, and not just because of the tight quarters. They had finally found their demons and he was willing to bet the Impala that that bitch out front wasn't the only one. Not for a job this big. It seemed like half the fucking town had somehow ingested demon blood. For what purpose, he had no clue, but if it was anything like what the Yellow-Eyed Demon had done to Sammy, then it wasn't fuckin' good.

And just maybe there was a chance to help these people if they could catch the bastards responsible.

The first demon had been a wash. There was no way they were taking her alive, certainly not if it meant sacrificing the two FBI agents. They might be idiots, but they were trying.

Dean cleared the bathrooms quickly before continuing his relentless move forward. The first demon had been a small fry, at most up to dealing with some stubborn locals. Not nearly experienced enough to hold her own against him and Sam. Which meant someone else was pulling the strings and Dean suspected he wouldn't find that demon hiding in the men's room, but he had to check.

There was the clear sharp sound of someone coming up behind him and Sam's voice rang out before he had time to spook. "On your six."

Which, damn it, was not what he had told his brother to do, but now wasn't the time to quibble over it. He nodded curtly to make it clear he had heard before advance on the kitchen. Kitchens were sucky places for a fight. All kinds of sharp things and Dean was a squish human who didn't have the advantages a demon had of not caring what happened to his body.

They both slipped through the door quickly, separating immediately so as not to bottleneck and provide an easy target. The kitchen wasn't fancy, but it was big. A few work tables in the middle, a row of appliances on one wall and a number of blocky metal things hanging from the ceiling.

Dean side-stepped around, trying to see through the clutter and trying to check all the nooks and corners at the same time. He was ducking down to see around a hood when a large kitchen knife sailed past his head.

"Fucking Winchesters!" a voice yelled. A man's voice, deep and a bit scratchy. Older maybe. It was coming from the far side of the room and Dean didn't hesitate to move forward. He did make sure to duck behind every solid survive he could kind as he ducked and bobbed his way forward like some kind of demented goffer.

"You should know your place, meatsacks!" the man yelled.

"Fuck you!" was Dean's witty response. Sam's was better. He fired another salt round in the demon's direction. Most of it missed based on the tinkling sound as rock salt met metal, but enough got through to have the demon yelping. It wouldn't maim the bastard any, but it would hurt like a bitch and hopefully keep him distracted and off his game enough for Dean to move in.

If the goddamn FBI hadn't jumped the gun on this one, they could have tried to take him alive. There was far more to this case then they knew yet, and questioning a demon was probably the only way they were going to figure it all out. But there wasn't time to set a trap and keeping everyone alive had just become the main priority. They'd just have to settle for taking out the source of this mess and not ask the whys and hows.

Cas might be a bit put out but his feather ass could suck it up. If he didn't like the way they did business, than he could try cleaning up these messes himself instead of outsourcing this shit to them.

"Gig's up, asshole!" Dean called out. "Cat's out of the bag and all that. Whatever you had planned for this town ain't happen."

"You don't even know what the 'gig' is!" the man snarled back, his voice much closer than the last time Dean had heard it. He had just enough time to scramble out from behind one work table and over to the next when the demon flipped the entire steel monstrosity like it was an empty carton and not something that probably weighed twice as much as Dean did.

Sam, bless him, had moved into the walkway and fired another round directed at the bastard. It had to hurt, but this wasn't some newbie demon up top for the first time and running around having fun. This bastard just grunted and stepped closer to Dean. His meatsuit had been an older man, pudgy in the middle and a bit thin up on top. He was surprisingly tan for someone this far north and was still wearing a chief's coat that was wrinkled and looked like it had seen a few rough days.

The man's face was blank, though. Nothing but the demon intent on wringing the life out of Dean.

But Dean had faced worse, and he didn't let it freak him out. He shoved himself forward, meeting the threat head on, demon killing knife in one hand. His first jab was sloppy, all brute force and little skill. But it gave him enough room to set up a second attempt that nearly gutted the man. Sam was moving somewhere behind him, shifting to his left to line up another shot that mostly cleared Dean. Bits of salt slammed into his leather jacket but only a few found skin. It hurt. Like a bitch. But it hurt the demon more and gave him the opening to lunge forward once more.

But demons were fast little fuckers when they wanted to be. And this one had apparently had enough of cat and mouse. It shoved backwards, hitting a table and rolling over it in one smooth move that the man he was wearing never could have managed on his own.

"Damn it!" Dean growled, scrambling to catch up. Sam was even farther back than him and both of them had the disadvantage of having to go around obstacles instead of over. The demon slammed out the back door and there was the immediate whooshing noise Dean was getting far too familiar with.

"Damn it, damn it, damn it!" he snarled, shoving through the door himself. The man's body was in the way and it knocked over down the back steps. The last of the black cloud escaped out of the man's mouth just as he hit the ground. Dean still fell forward on top of him, arm raised to shove the knife's blade right through the heart. But the body beneath him was already empty and dead. There would be no moral dilemma about killing the host to get the demon now. That monster had already jumped ship and left nothing behind but a corpse.

"Goddamn it!" Dean roared, useless and furious. Killing one demon wasn't enough. They hadn't stopped whatever was happening and now the demon knew they were here and gunning for his ass. It'd find another host quickly enough and continue on its merry way of poisoning and killing people. Except now it would know that its time was limited, that hunters were gunning for it and that there was nothing left to hide and no reason to try cleaning up after itself.

Which all meant one simple thing. There would be no more survivors.


	14. Chapter 14

Sam gave his brother a moment to curse and yell. It wasn't what their Dad would have called professional, but Sam knew his brother and sometimes he needed to get things out of his system. Losing a lead like this was enough to have Sam wanting to say a few choice words. He kept focused, however, watching both the backyard and the doorway leading back into the restaurant. They were still on the job and couldn't afford to assume a space was safe. Not until they had secured it.

It didn't take Dean long to get his head out of his ass. He lumbered back up the steps, still muttering, but heading back inside to the two agents they left huddling on the floor.

"At least we've found our source," Sam pointed out calmly. There was something about having Dean throw a fit that had him cool as a cucumber in response. He could argue that it was from the logical need for one of them to maintain control, but it really had more to do with wanting to outdo his brother at something.

"Doesn't tell us how many people they've infected. Or _why_."

Sam shrugged. "It's more than we had yesterday."

"Yeah, about that," Dean grumbled just as they walked back into the main dining room. "What the ever livin' fuck did you think you were doin'?" he yelled at the Feds. "Jesus H. Christ on a cracker. We tell ya shit's going down and you think _that's_ a good time to go all lone gunman about shit you don't even have the foggiest clue about? This! This is why you don't involve law enforcement. Christ, you people have to be the dumbest sad sacks of shit I ever met."

"Dean," Sam warned. He could understand why his brother was angry, but it was just weird hearing him chew someone out in the same tone of voice Bobby used when one of them did something particularly stupid.

"No, no, no," Dean answered, just warming up. The Feds had moved to a more defendable position but they were both staring at the brothers wide eyed and probably not a little bit freaked out. That happened after your first demon. "These idiots," Dean continued as if he were actually talking to his brother. "These ones, they got the brilliant idea to go sniffing around without telling the professionals. I mean, gee wiz, when we say there's some big bad evil in town threatening half the freaking population on this mountain, the smart response is not to go blundering into the first decent lead we've had."

"In our defense," Agent Mulder finally interrupted, his voice waved a little but he managed a pretty good impersonation of someone calm and confident. "Following up on a lead is what we're trained to do."

"Yeah, well, you're training sucks."

Sam had to snort at that. These weren't local cops, these were the FBI. And sure, they might know nothing about the supernatural, but they were still the _FBI_. Dean might try to act like he didn't care, but Sam could remember a time when Dean was obsessed with crime dramas and action flicks where the FBI had to catch the bad guy and save the day. Dean had always wanted to be the hero, and as much as he might act like he thought he was better than them, Sam at least knew better.

Dena shot him a look that suggested he wasn't as oblivious to the irony here as he'd like to be, but that he was damn well going to ignore it. "You guys alright?" he finally asked gruffly.

"A bit banged up, but we should be fine," Mulder answered. Agent Scully was still rubbing gently at her throat and Sam could sympathize. Getting choked like that was brutal on the vocal chords.

She still managed to cough out a question. "The woman?"

"Dead," Dead answered bluntly. "Probably been dead for a while," he added. "So no use cryin' over spilt milk. The couple of rounds you put in her wouldn't have made a difference." It was actually the kind thing to say, even if Dean's tone made it sound as if it wasn't. In all honesty, they couldn't say for sure if the demon's host had been fatally damaged or not. Not without some kind of medical exam. But they had both learned to just assume that was the case in situations like these. They couldn't afford to hesitate when it came to killing the demon.

"Right," Mulder answered. "Sure. No difference at all. Christ." He didn't look so good. Surely he'd had to fire his side arm in the line of duty before, but he kept looking, then not looking, at the body.

Sam wasn't expecting his brother to take pity on the guy. "It's fucked up," he announced. "But you learn to deal."

Which, really, about summed up their life.

Mulder's attention shifted suddenly to the two of them, the dead body seemingly forgot as he studied both of the brothers. "So this is the explanation. The method to the madness."

"Surprise. Monsters are real. Bet they didn't cover that in your fancy super secret FBI training." And sure, Dean wasn't jealous at all… Sam kind of wanted to smirk – except it was too easy to picture Dean in another life working his way earnestly through the FBI ranks, out there hunting a different kind of monster. Possibilities like that had never been an option for either of them, Sam knew that now.

But Mulder grinned back, the response suddenly chipper. "You'd be surprised. I have a whole filing cabinet of unexplained and bizarre things like this. We are, actually, the officially designated weird stuff investigators. We should compare notes."

And Sam couldn't help himself this time, he laughed. Loudly. The poleaxed look on Dean's face was priceless. His stupid brother had resigned himself to a lifetime of being on the fringe. You could practically smell the smoke as Dean's poor brain tried to shift gears.

"Huh?"

"I believe the colloquial term would be zombie, yes?" Mulder asked. "We've had a couple of cases that presented as something along those lines. The last one was a bug parasite, however. Nasty thing, about this big," he happily explained, gesturing widely. "It attached itself to the nervous system. It didn't immediately kill its subjects, but the interference with the body's natural chemical and nerve reactions would shut down major organs. Scully found a brilliant way to remove one of them by cutting open the patient's-"

"Nope!" Dean yelped, holding both hands up. "I don't wanna know."

Sam smirked. "Medical drama squicks Dean out," he explained. "He'll do his own stitches, but once you start talking about doctors and hospitals, he's like a little girl. I'd be happy to hear more, however."

"Bitch."

"Jerk."

"Boys," Scully croaked. She was probably aiming for firm and professional, but it came out sounding more tortured and like a dying cat. They both flinched guiltily. "Explanations. Please," she demanded politely.

"Right. Demon, not a zombie," Dean jumped in. "Another one out back, but it smoked before we could kill it."

"Smoked?"

"Jumped ship. Bugged out. Flew the coup. It's what a demon does when they're done with one host. They smoke out and go find themselves a new one. Which means it can be anyone in this town now, and we won't know until it's probably too late. Oh, and Christo."

Nothing happened except for both agents once more looking at them like they had lost their minds.

Dean grinned back unrepentedly. "Just checking. Demons have to play by certain rules. One, they flinch when you say the lords name. And by flinch, I mean their eyes turn completely black." Judging by the look on Mulder's face, he had already had the privilege of seeing that. Dean nodded in response before continuing. "Two, they can't cross salt lines."

"Hah!" Mulder exclaimed, giving Scully a quick look. She didn't bother trying to answer verbally. She just rolled her eyes and ignored him. Mulder grinned proudly. "We had a debate going on that. After Howard's place. I knew it had to be something like that. A chemical reaction or something. Scully just thought you were nuts and latched onto the idea as a mental coping mechanism. A sort of off switch to the constant paranoia specifically manufactured by your broken subconscious to give you a 'safe' place."

Scully smacked him. "We. Discussed. This."

Mulder smiled back at her, looking pleased with himself and with getting a reaction out of her. "Yes, yes. Don't challenge their world beliefs. Scully. _That_ just happened," he stressed, pointing at the body. "Maybe you missed some parts of it while the petite woman was holding you up over her head with only one hand, but she threw a table at me. With her _mind_. And her eyes turned black. Oh, and I shot her in the head and she shrugged it off like it tickled. Really. Please explain to me the science because I'm dying to know."

She opened her mouth to say something, but couldn't seem to find the words. She even turned to look at them like they would know what to say.

Sam tried. "Technically, the salt isn't a chemical reaction. At least not with salt lines. They can't cross them because they have to stop to count each grain. But shooting them with rock salt does cause them pain." He winced at his own inconsistencies. "I don't know what to tell you. It just works."

The idea of counting salt seemed to throw the man off. He gapped at them for a moment, clearly having more trouble wrapping his head around that notion than the explaination that it was some kind of zombie having a negative medical reaction to sodium.

"You can't kill them," Dean suddenly interrupted. He held up one hand when they looked like they wanted to argue. "Even we've only found a couple of ways to do it, and it's very specific. And not something you can recreate. Trust me on this. We've paid dearly for it. You can keep a demon out, you can trap a demon, and you can exorcist one – but you aren't going to kill one. Not without serious help. So just forget that idea right now. You run into one, you buckle down and cover your ass."

Now they both looked like they wanted to argue the point but Dean was serious and his glare was enough to get them to leave that topic alone. "Are they what killed Mr. Haymond and Mr. Nelson?" Mulder asked instead.

"We don't know why they killed them and not the others," Sam explained. "That list we sent you, everyone on it at some point ingested demon blood, we think without knowing it."

"Blood drinking?"

"Don't ask," Dean snapped back sullenly.

Scully cleared her throat. "Credit cards," she said carefully.

It was a bit of a non-sequitur, but Mulder jumped on it right away. "Nine of the people on your list bought dinner here February 28th. Some sort of Mardi Gras 'buy one, get one free deal'."

Dean whistled. "No shit?"

Mulder smirked back. "Fancy FBI work."

Sam ignored the two of them, more focused on the problem. "That was more than three weeks ago." When no one else responded, he continued quickly. "If our theory is right, if their abducting one person a day, then returning them without any memories of having gone missing, that means more than twenty people have been taken."

Scully was shaking her head. "Someone would have noticed," she whispered.

"Not necessarily," Dean argued. "If you're a fall down drunk, you wouldn't think much of a few hours gone. Or say you lived alone and no one noticed. You'd think you just dozed off on the couch or something."

"Three of the people on your list are still missing," Mulder add. "The Sheriff implied they were either drunks or drug addicts. I doubt anyone would have noticed if they had disappeared for any length of time. But the Sheriff hadn't seen them around in a while."

Sam flinched. Right. So probably three more dead people to add to their list.

"The bodies," Scully managed, her voice still raw but getting better. "Where are they? Why what happen to Haymond?"

"We spooked them somehow. They only got violent the day after we arrived." Sam answered. It was the only thing that made sense. If the demon's had been running this little operation for over three weeks then they had been doing a very good job of hiding their tracks. If Cas hadn't clued them in that something weird was going on in this area, it was likely no one would have noticed. "The demons must have known we were here from the beginning."

"About that," Mulder interrupted. "How _did_ you know?"

Dean scowled. "Cas," he answered, like that would make any sense to someone else. When the two agents just kept staring at him, he sighed loudly. "An angel, alright? A real pain in the ass. But he got the word something was happening up here and he sent us after it."

"That's what Haymond was for!" Sam exclaimed. "All those symbols. The common element was silence and containment. If you were trying to hide something from the entire heavenly host it would take a lot of power and some complicated work."

Dean grimaced, follow his line of reasoning easily. "You think they did some kind of ritual when they killed him to increase the strength of their wards. Poor fuck."

Scully was shaking her head. "His wounds. He carved them."

"Really poor fuck," Dean corrected with only a slight flinch at the very idea. They had seen upclose what damage a demon could inflict on its host for nothing else than the pleasure of maiming something. "Demon possession, I'd guess. They can make you do anything when they've got control of you, including killing yourself."

Everyone flinched at that. Of all the ways to go, that was certainly low on Sam's list. That was a special kind of torture all its own and one his family had been too close to too many times.

"And Mr. Nelson?"

"Collateral," Dean answered. "They couldn't hide it, so killing him would be the easiest."

"Someone snapped his neck."

"Sure," Dean agreed with a shrug. "Demon could use a host to do that to itself easy enough."

"Himself," Sam muttered.

Dean flushed angrily but kept his voice level. "Whatever. Poor bastard's still dead." And using pronouns might make it more difficult to think about, but Sam wasn't comfortable with glossing over the fact that Mr. Nelson had been a person at one point, even if he hadn't died that way.

Both agents looked a bit sick at the notion that their murder victim may have calmly snapped his own neck. "How do we stop it?" Scully demanded. "We can't arrest someone for being a demon."

Dean snorted at the very idea.

"And you said we can't kill it," Mulder added.

"You can't," Dean clarified, more than a bit smug. "We can." He pulled out the knife. "Special gift from hell. Don't ask where we got it from. It works. Only problem is, ya got to get close enough to make it work. And they don't exactly make that easy."

"And now the demon could be anyone," Sam added.

"So we're back to square one. Thanks to you guys for rushing in blindly."

Mulder scowled back, the criticism clearly striking a nerve. But he managed to cover it up with a fake grin. "If I didn't rush blindly into things, I wouldn't ever get anything done," he returned glibly. "And we're not all the way back to square one. This restaurant is owned by Mr. Joseph Jacobson, 52 years old, divorced, lives alone and owns two other pieces of property. His house and an old diner about an hour out of town. The diner has been closed since before he bought it and it's about the only things for 20 minutes in either direction off of one of the roads leading south. I may not know much about demons, but I know criminals. If you plan on kidnapping people at all hours of the day, you don't do it at an upscale steak house. You use the most abandoned area you have access to, and Mr. Jacobson owned exactly what a murder would need. How about that for fancy police work?"

* * *

"We're coming."

"The hell you are."

"This is an official case."

"Well then, you can officially kiss my ass."

"You can't stop us from going."

"Don't tempt me," Dean muttered. "I will so lock your ass in a closet. I might even call somebody to come find you in few hours if I'm feeling generous."

Mulder scowled back at him. The two of them had been arguing about this since they'd started on the new plan. Just because the Feds came up with a good lead on where the demon might retreat to did _not_ mean it was a good idea to bring two brand spankin' new newbs on a demon hunt. "You don't know what you might be dealing with. What if there's more than one? What if whatever they're doing works against you? You need all the help you can get. If nothing else, we can make sure no one like the Sheriff gets in the way. Having an official presence with you will go a long way to keeping you out of trouble."

"That's not a bad thought," Sam piped up, the traitor. He was working with Scully to figure out the exact location of this old diner and how best to approach it. Apparently there were snow mobile tracks all over this part of the country and they made for good emergency roads in a pinch. It might give them the element of surprise, approaching from a different direction than the main road. "Besides," Sam continued, gesturing to the map he was working with. "You can't exactly drive the Impala through this. They've got four wheel drive and a higher clearance."

"The Impala has all of our tools!" Dean objected.

Sam rolled his eyes. "So pack 'em up."

And damnit, but his brother was right. Their car wasn't meant for conditions like these. Plus, if the demons knew the brothers on sight, there was the possibility they'd recognize the car from a mile off. Dean didn't actually agree with anything, but he stomped off to his baby. He had a couple of empty duffels in the trunk for exactly this sort of contingency and he shook them out before popping open the second hidden latch in the trunk.

"Oh, wow."

Agent Mulder was hovering right over Dean's shoulder, way too close for personal space. Dean knocked him back with an elbow. "Ya mind?" he grumbled before getting to work. They'd need guns. They'd need salt. Something to mark with, just in case. As much holy water as they could carry. An extra bible and rosary. More guns. Lighter fluid and matches, for cleanup.

"Is that a crossbow?" Mulder asked, fidgeting around behind Dean, trying to see around his head and arms as Dean tried to get some work done. He tried to touch something and Dean had to smack his hand away. Nobody with light fingers was walking off with any of his toys. Mulder just ignored him and went back to sticking his nose into things. "Why are you bringing handcuffs?" he asked.

Dean grunted. "We might get lucky."

It took him a moment to realize that was really poor choice of words. "Interrogation," he hastily clarified. "If we can catch it alive and before it smokes out, we can ask some questions. We need to know what they were trying to do here and how to stop it from happening anywhere else."

Mulder seemed to calm down at that. "You think it could happen again? Won't we stop that if we stop the demon?"

Dean shook his head, wishing it was that fucking simple. "No. This is just one demon. There's hundreds of them. Thousands. Maybe more. Legion and all that. And whatever they are trying to do here, it unlocks a seal. You remember those?" he asked, shooting the man another smug look. "I told ya all about them when you said you wanted to listen."

The man flushed. Clearly he hadn't believed a word at the time.

Dean took pity on him and explained the basics. "Demons need to break these seals to get their boss out of prison and start that little thing the apocalypse. We have to stop them. But there's a lot of possible seals, and it's impossible to protect all of them. But a lot of them have very specific requirements. If we can, I'd like to make sure this one is as limited as possible."

Mulder was watching him now, which was damn disconcerting. "How many have they broken?"

Dean grimaced. "We don't know."

"How many have you stopped?"

Dean shrugged. "A couple dozen? I think. Sammy would know better. He remembers shit like that."

"Must keep you busy."

"You have no fucking idea. I miss the days when ghost hunts were a full time job, with the occasional wendigo just to mix things up." It was the truth, but he maybe brought it up for the pleasure of seeing Mr. Agent loose his shit more at finding out how many things went bump in the night.

But the other man just nodded solemnly. "I know what you mean," he said like he actually had a clue.

Dean stopped, one heavy duffle on each shoulder and the trunk once more secured. Sure, the guy was kind of a smart ass, but he seemed sincere. "No shit?" Dean asked. "Huh. Guess maybe we ought to talk shop some time. Our Dad took pretty good notes of most of his hunts."

"Really?" And like a light switch, the guy was back to bright smiles and eagerness. "Can I make copies?"

"No." The response was automatic and firm.

"Why not?"

"It's my Dad' journal."

"So?"

"It's personal."

"But how else am I supposed to learn about things?"

"Christ. You wanna see my medical records too?" Dean demanded, knowing it was stupid. It wasn't like Dad's book was some holy artifact or anything. But it had been Dad's. And the only other person they ever shared it with was Bobby.

Dean ended the conversation by the tried and true tactic of walking away. He should have realized the guy wouldn't give up that easily.

"Sam. This book of your Dad's, it's got important information in it, right? I ought to make some copies of it. For the record."

Great. Sam the uber dork, with his fixation on research and modernizing hunting and _networking_ … Of course he was going to say yes.

"Hell no," Sam answered without even looking up.

Or maybe he wouldn't. Dean grinned at him proudly. Apparently, there were some things they could agree on.

"We can discuss information exchange latter," Sam added, bursting some of Dean's bubble. Yeah, it was cool that the FBI was actually on their side in this case, but they were still Feds. Still the man. Still government lackeys with sticks up their butts and not hunters and there was no reason to be getting all friendly with them.

"Whatever. Let's go get ourselves a demon."

'Cause if you couldn't fix a problem, ignore the hell out of it and maybe it'll go away. A perfectly sound plan. After all, that was how Dean had survived this far.


	15. Chapter 15

It took them over an hour to drive from the western outskirts of Malone to the southernmost area of the larger community area. He wasn't even sure what town, village or hamlet they were in anymore. The snow had gotten deeper though, and the road not as well cleared. Dean had managed to snag driving, but he suspect that was only because the agents were more interested in playing twenty questions. Dean let Sam handle most of it, but there were just so many parts of their lives that were frankly nobody else's business. Like what happened to Dad. Dean's own deal. Sammy, the king boy of hell. Ruby. Their past was a minefield of bad things and unfortunately the rest of it didn't make a whole lot of sense without knowing the nastier parts of their lives.

Somehow, he didn't think the feds would be quite so happy to work with them if they knew some of the more questionable choices he and his brother had made over the years. At least Sam had enough sense to keep those parts to himself. He might argue incessantly to Dean in favor of whatever fool idea he got in his head, but he knew better than to try to explain to outsiders what it meant to stand on the edge of that abyss.

They missed the turn off the first time and had to double back to find it. It was already early spring, and while there was plenty of snow still on the ground, it wasn't enough for snowmobiling. The track was deserted. And muddy. The car barely made it through parts, but Dean did his best to keep it moving. It handled differently than the Impala but he'd spent enough time behind the wheel of trucks and whatever else Bobby dug up to know how to use its size to his advantage. Judging where to stop was a bit tricky. The foliage was thick with evergreens packed tightly enough that they wouldn't be able to see the break that led to the old building until they were practically right on top of it.

"We'll stop here," he finally announced, easing the car to a halt on a bit of dry land higher than the soggy rest. "Time to walk, boys. And girl." He added, flashing her a cheeky grin in the rearview mirror. Agent Scully didn't look impressed, but Dean wasn't the type to let that bother him. They all stomped out of the car, the brothers' immediately checking their gear and passing out any extras to their accomplices. The boys were dressed for this kind of weather in jeans and boots, flannel and leather jackets. And while both agents had worn good hiking boots to deal with the elements, they were both still in suits and long wool coats.

"You ain't gonna trip on that, are you?" Dean asked. The looks he got were answer enough. He smirked back, feeling the rush of an upcoming job making him down right lively. It was better than the cold, tight knot of fear and rage. That would come latter, but for now he could be a smart ass.

"Just to confirm. One more time. Sam, you and Scully will enter from the back. Sam's got the knife, so our only function is to give him an opening to use it. Get in, stay low, don't get killed, and wait for a clear chance. You won't get a second one. Mulder and I will go through the front and try to provide as much of a distraction as we can."

He didn't like being separated from his brother, unable to watch his back the way he could if he was standing next to him, but they had to divide their resources as best they could. Sam and Dean would each take point, with the agents backing them up. They'd already passed out their two spare double barrel shotguns to the agents and both had confirmed they knew the business end well enough not to hit a friendly.

"Joseph Jacobson's body is slowly turning into one big ice cube back at his main restaurant," Dean continued. "That means whoever's in here is going to be someone else. No tellin' who, so just assume anyone you meet is an enemy."

"What if they've taken another person?" Scully challenged. "A victim? If they've been taking one a day, then we're due for another."

Sam shook his head. "It's still likely a demon. If they're controlling the person enough to get them here and get them back without remembering anything, then they can use them to kill you just as easily. Don't let that happen. You won't do anyone any good that way."

She looked like she wanted to object but still nodded that she understood.

She'd hesitate. Dean knew it. Mulder would too, probably. Newbies always did. Even Sam and Dean did sometimes. That was one of the worst parts about demons. You couldn't take any pride in killin' them, because it meant also taking out whatever poor shmuck was their first victim. No one won that fight.

"Just focus on the task at hand," Dean told them all. "We've got a demon we got to stop before he does anything worse. And trust me, there's always a worst. Get in, kill the demon, and we all walk away from this."

Sam nodded and shouldered his gun. He knew the drill. But the two agents were back to staring at Dean like they were trying to figure him out. Like there was some great mystery behind him or deeper meaning or maybe they were back to just thinking he was crazy.

"Let's get this over with," Dean snapped, turning away and trudging down the last of the trail. The snow here was even thicker and banned by densely packed ruts and boot-catching drifts. It made walking slow but that gave them time to get their head in the game and scope out the area. As predicted, there wasn't a lot of warning before the trees broke and a clearing extended on both sides. The right hand was flat and empty, the road visible on the other side. On the left was the old building. At one point, it must have served as a kind of bar with aspirations of being a rest stop diner. Bits and pieces of the original design remained, all classic 80s modernism. The building itself looked solid, however. Built to handle the winters out here. Mr. Jacobson had probably had plans of remodeling and expanding his budding restaurant business.

Dean gave a sharp wave to his brother as they separated at the edge of the tree line. Sam would have the longer walk around to the back and they'd lose all sightlines of each other in the meantime. The one good thing was seeing Agent Scully on his six, gun held at the ready and attention focused. She wouldn't do as good a job at having Sam's back as Dean would, but maybe she'd be alright.

Agent Mulder was a bit less reassuring. His step had him wandering a bit farther from Dean's side than he'd like. It made Dean twitchy feeling he had to watch both ahead and to the side to make sure the man kept up. There wasn't much to see outside. All of the funtimes were waiting indoors.

But Mulder stopped near the front door and gestured for Dean to look over. There were three cars parked out front. Dean hadn't paid too much attention to them. If the demons had killed off a few victims, they'd have collected a number of cars at this point. But the very last car was eye catching, and Dean suddenly understood the frantic tone to Mulder's gestures.

Sheriff Department vehicles were pretty distinct.

"Well, fuck."

Dean had only talked to the Sheriff once since being in town, back when they got their very first look at Mr. Haymond. Back when Dean and Sam could still pretend to be FBI agents here to save the day. But he knew the real FBI agents had been in regular contact with the man.

"You tell him about Jacobson?" Dean muttered, trying to keep his voice low, but needing to know.

"No," Mulder whispered back quickly. "But the information was faxed over. He could have seen it."

"Faxed?" Dean couldn't help but hiss back. "Who the hell faxes anymore. I thought you guys were-"

Someone screamed loud and shrilly from inside the house. The kind of animalistic scream Dean had heard one too many times from people who knew they were about to die.

Dean cursed, then cursed again as Mulder bound up the front steps and into position by the door. He wasn't waiting for a discussion on how this might change their plans and Dean had no choice but to back him up. They had one shot at getting anyone out of this alive.

He kicked open the door and lead to the left while Mulder fanned out to the right.

The room was rectangular and straight forward. A pass-through to the kitchen on the back wall. Booths along all the windows and a few tables and chairs still scattered across the floor. Old Formica and metal things that had probably once been imitations of the minimalist movement or some shit. Now they were dirty rusting tripping hazards. And they certainly didn't provide any cover from what was happening in the center of the room.

The demons had built an honest to God altar. Made of wood and stone and everything. Though the markings running up and down its base and along the top looked like they had been done with a sharpie and not something more esoteric. The poor bastard trussed up and squirming on top of it was much more authentic. Dean recognized him from their list, some guy working at one of the local dairy farms that had stopped for gas the same time he and Sam did. They got the man's name from the cashier and it was Mike something-or-another. A bit older than Dean but skinnier and pale with a buzz cut and a predilection to camo but who'd joked easily with the gas attendant while getting his change and who'd yielded politely when trying to get back on the road. A nice, normal guy. Now screaming his head off at a pitch he'd probably never thought he could reach before. Dean didn't blame him.

There was only a split second to make some choices in. The Sheriff was standing the closest to their position, his back turned to them which either meant he didn't care that someone just exploded into the room behind him (most likely demon possessed then) or he was more focused on watching their vic and what was clearly a demon bitch hovering near him (still on the side of the good guys and trying to help). It was a bad call to have to make, so Dean went for the low hanging fruit. The female demon was up near the altar, a knife in one hand, a smile on her face and eyes as black as sin.

Dean shot her.

It wasn't his best shot. A bit too low for a head shot and the bitch could move when motivated. It caught her in the shoulder and didn't even slow her down as she pulled the bound man off the table and pinned him in front of her with an arm around his neck and the knife tucked up against the fleshy bit of the man's side.

"Stay where you are!" she shouted. "Or I stick him like a pin cushion!"

Dean hesitated. It was a dumbass thing to do and he _knew_ better, but they had one clearly non-possessed civilian in the middle of his line of fire. If he stalled, if he bought them time…he might be able to come up with something…

"You too!" the demon shouted, turning so her back was pointed to the far windows, the altar now between her and the rest of the room. She wasn't _not_ watching Dean and Mulder, but it was clear that she was directing that last warning towards the kitchen door.

Sam was already there, moving slowly but calmly away from the bottleneck by the door, gun up and trained on her. Scully followed just behind, her weapon trained without hesitation on the Sheriff.

"We were wondering when you boys would show up," the Sheriff commented mildly. He turned towards Dean, his face still lined and solemn. He looked as serious and firm as ever but that sure as hell wasn't the Sheriff inside pulling the strings.

"Goddamn motherfucker," Dean replied with feeling. He shifted his gun over, not trusting Mulder to shoot the man if needed.

The Sheriff managed something that looked like a smile. "And how do you plan to fix this one, Dean Winchester?"

Dean eyed the rest of the room, adding up resources and possibilities and still coming up really fucking short. Sure, there were four of them, and only two demons. But two demons were enough to kick their ass given the right circumstances. And none of that would help Mike, the guy from the gas station.

"You won't do it," Dean finally challenged. Because when in doubt, stall like mad. "You need him, don't you? For your little pet project here. He's one of your special, demonblood fed sad fucks. Killing him will mess up your plan."

The Sheriff shrugged. "Actually, no. Yet another failure, I'm afraid. We've already made the attempt with him, so there's nothing left to do now bu clean up the mess and try again. He's worth nothing to us now. So it doesn't matter to us if he lives or dies, but it does matter to you, doesn't it, Winchester?" And that was part of the whole demon charm – they were damn good at finding your weak points and stabbing them with a stick just to watch you squirm. "Or have you gotten so used to getting other people killed that it doesn't even register anymore?" the demon continued. "How many of the rumors about you two are true? They say you're working with those feather freaks, but we demons know the truth. We know how close you are to our side of the world. Both of you. Why, Dean, word is you fit right in down there!"

"Give it up!" Dean interrupted, because the last thing he needed was to hear that shit. And Sam looked about two seconds away from saying something himself and Dean couldn't let him. Their only hope of getting out of this thing with anybody alive was the knife Sam had. So Dean would buy him some time and keep the attention off of his brother as best he could. The lug was already doing what he should, shifting slowly, one step at a time, closer to the demon holding their hostage. Dean raised his voice and projected like his elementary class teacher always told him he should. "Whatever you were trying to do here, you've failed. We're on to you. The FBI's on to you. And the angels won't back off either. They want you gone." Which okay, it was sort of a bitch move invoking the name of the feather brigade, but come on – the guys had juice even if they seemed to high and mighty and shit to use it properly.

But the Sheriff didn't look impressed. He sneered back at Dean. "And yet none of them are here. Don't you find it odd that they haven't even been in contact with you since you arrived here?"

"Why would they? Do I look like a freakin' angel messenger boy?"

"Yes, actually." The Sheriff's face twisted into something nasty looking that made it very clear how disgusting he found Dean. Dean chose to take it as a compliment and ignore the implication that it made him the angels' bitch. "But as long as you're here, you're completely on your own, hunter. No backup coming to save you this time. We've made a perfect bubble. We could do anything and no one could stop us!"

Aaaand cue the bragging rant. Seriously. If Dean had a dollar for every time some big, bad and nasty told him he was too puny to succeed – well, Dean wouldn't be living off of diner grub and in flea infested dives, that's for sure. "Doesn't seem to be working out well for you so far," he pointed out smugly. "Another failure, you said. Which means the others were as well. Which means we're going to stop your ass before you get any further." He was rambling a bit now himself, but Sam had made good progress. Scully had taken the opposite side, but she was clearly shuffling along in a much more blatant, aggressive manner. It had the demon bitch focused on her and the gun in her hands. Dean didn't know what the fuck Mulder was doing, he could risk checking, but he hoped the man had a cleaner shot than he did, because as of right now, Dean stood a good chance of getting not just the Sheriff but everyone standing behind him – which included the other demon but also their vic and possibly his brother.

The Sheriff's face was turning red, a look that wasn't good for him at all. "We still have 16 more days!" he shouted. "That's plenty of time! We'll find one of these meatsacks that works!"

Sammy's steps faulted, just slightly and Dean clamped down on the urge to focus on him. Something had startled his brother, and givin' the way he was staring at the Sheriff now and not the demon closest to him, he figured it had to be something the man had said. Dean's thoughts raced and it took him a longer second to figure out the connection. "Lent. You're using the forty days of lent," he finally said flatly, testing the idea out loud and finding it worked very neatly. Demonblood steaks on Mardi Gras, one vic a day every day since then, with dozens of people lined up and waiting… It was basic supernatural methodology. Seasons, moons, special days and times, all that shit matter in magic. And lent was supposed to be the most holy time of the year for the Christian church. It was filled with all kinds of rituals and meanings. It wasn't surprising that a demon had latched onto it for some nefarious purpose.

The demon wearing a mansuit was now smiling again. "And we're only on day 24! Plenty of time left!" he cowed, like it was a freakin' blow out sale advertisement. Figures. Bastard was probably a used car sales man in another life.

But 24 people. Jesus. That was even more than they had identified, and those were the ones they'd performed step two of whateverthefuck this was on. How many more where lined up and waiting? Did everyone on this freakin' mountain go in for steaks? Where were the vegans when you needed them? Dean shoved down that bit of hysteria and focused on keeping the demon pissed off and looking at him. "And none of them worked? Guess you aren't too good then."

"Shut up, maggot!" And, ah, they were back to the name calling. "You don't even know what you're talking about!"

"Some stupid plan about death and destruction, I'm sure."

"Ha! _Idiots_! This is about rebirth! We will create the perfect vessel!"

"…what." Because that made shit for sense. There were rules about these kinds of things. Strict rules. Natural order of the world and all that jazz. As unbreakable as a demon deal. Sure, Dean's life was three kinds of crazy but the one constant had always been that there were limitations to everything. Every monster, every bit of magic, every supernatural thing had some law it had to follow. It was the only thing that gave humans half a chance at survival.

The Sheriff was moving closer to Dean and gesturing broadly his hands, his body language no longer the tightly controlled presentation Dean was used to from the human and it was like seeing the demon inside more clearly. "Human hosts are so limited! So…annoying," he complained, sounding more like a frustrate yuppie complaining that their coffee was too hot instead of a mass murder. Dean glared back, thinking about how demon possession wasn't exactly fun times for the host either. But he didn't interrupt for once. The bastard wanted to talk, so let him. The bitch demon behind him was nodding along, paying more attention to her friend than what Sam was doing.

"We'll make one that can't be destroyed!" the demon continued preaching. "One that can't be exorcised. One not bound to ridiculous limitations. And once we have perfected the method, not only we will have an advantage no other demon will possess, but we will be the ones to present our solution to our great lord and master, he who-"

"Oh my god, shut up already!" Dean exclaimed, unable to hold it back any longer. Jesus H. Christ, he was not going to stand around and listen to some uppity demon with delusions of grandeur rant about his mancrush on Satan. There were just some things a man couldn't stand. Besides which, he was having a hard time keeping a straight face when confronted with this much bullshit. "What the fuck. I don't know what glue you've been sniffing or what nuthouse they dragged your ass out of, but it can't be done."

The demon actually started screeching at that point. "Yes! Yes, it can!" he yelled, stomping closer to Dean and forcing him to back up practically into one of the booths. "All rites have powers, just as they have limitations. We simply had to find a method of combining the strength of some of the most basic governing elements to circumvent the pitiful limitations imposed upon us. We will no longer be ruled by such constraints!" he shouted, arms waving wildly and Dean tried to jerk back even further. "The others may have doubted us! Called us crazy! Claimed it was sacrilege! But we know the truth! We'll prove it to them all! We will-"

The demon's hands reached for Dean mid-rant and he fired the shotgun point blank into the man's chest.

All hell broke loose then.


	16. Chapter 16

Sam kept his breathing steady and even. It was a trick he had always been better at. Jessica had laughed about it when they had done yoga together, impressed by his ability to find his center and all that. He had appreciated the health benefits of good breathing exercises and self-control. At the time he had told himself it was helpful during the stress of finals and term papers. He'd probably always known if made him a better hunter when needed. Quiet. Controlled. Stealthy.

The second demon hadn't forgotten he was there, exactly. But she had dismissed him as not important. He'd kept the knife out of sight as much as possible, his body language loose and open even as he slowly inched his way closer. He ignored entirely the pitiful noises coming out her human shield. The man had already pissed himself at some point but still managed the occasional, desperate, full body jerk as he tried to escape her hold.

Sam would need to be close if he wanted to have a chance at saving the man's life. Dean was doing his best to give him that opportunity, being as annoying to demons as only he knew how. Honestly, it must be special talent of his brother's to drive supernatural creatures into a rage. The demon in the Sheriff seemed to be the ringleader of this little show, and he was busy shouting and not paying much attention to the three other people in the room. He just needed a little bit longer, just a few more feet…

But he also knew it was like a high speed collision. You could slam on the brakes as much as you wanted, but at some point, impact was going to happen. The demon reached for his brother and Dean did the only thing he could. He fired.

Sam didn't have time to check why or whether it was enough to protect his brother. He lunged forward instead, grabbing for the demon, hoping his size and the element of surprise would be enough to pull her back.

It wasn't.

The man let out a half choked scream that ended in something that sound more like a gurgling noise. The knife in the demon's hand was small but sharp and long enough to dig in deep to the man's side. The struggle to get her off of him only twisted the knife deeper, tearing through more chunks of flesh until slipping free. Sam ignored it.

He jabbed upward with his own knife. He only needed one good hit, but the demon was quicker and stronger and seemed to understand the threat the knife truly was. She lashed out at his arm, knocking it away almost hard enough to crack bone before her own knife was back up and flying towards his face. It wasn't strictly speaking a good target to aim at, not nearly as fleshy and vital as certain other parts of him were, but it had the anticipated psychological effect of getting him to back off quickly.

Guns were firing all over the room.

Dean had shot the Sheriff once in the chest. It sounded like Mulder had followed that up with more rounds, and part of Sam was pleased to know the FBI wasn't fooling around. And Sam was twisting around, trying to avoid that bloody knife, when Scully fired one round dead center into the woman. It was a damn good shot, especially since it didn't hit him in the process. Hopefully it hadn't been a coincidence but calmly calculated and supported by an assurance in her own skill level. Because with the way the two of them were tussling, she could have easily taken out half of Sam's head.

Scully seemed to think the same thing because she cursed and gave up on trying to shoot his assailant.

Sam dodged another powerful blow and side stepped around some of the debris on the floor, trying to give himself some space to work in. He could hear things crashing on the other side of the room and more than one bitten off curse and grunt.

In the peripheral of his vision he could see Agent Scully crouched on the floor by the vic, her hands buried in cloth and jacket and blood as she tried to hold the man's guts together. It was a lost cause, but she'd mentioned something about being a doctor by trade and maybe having one on sight might mean the difference between life and death.

There wasn't much she could do to help Sam anyway. He had the knife, he just had to find an opening good enough to get it in. Without turning into a pincushion himself.

* * *

Dean fired and Mulder fired only a moment afterwards. The man had managed to move himself far enough to one side to have a clear shot without endangering anyone else in the room. And he took advantage of it. He fired the double round in the shotgun cleanly into the demon, but didn't stop there. Once the shotgun was empty, he dropped it and switch to his personal weapon, adding two more direct hits to the torso. It may have been a bit like throwing pebbles at an angry dog, but it was enough to get the demon to stumble back away from Dean.

Dean dove to the side, more willing to risk getting caught by friendly fire than stay within arm's reach of a demon. That thing would snap his neck like an old twig if it got ahold of him. He'd rather get a bit perforated than dead.

He didn't need to worry about it. Apparently Mulder did a good enough job to get the demon's attention focused on him. With a wave of one hand the demon sent Mulder flying backwards into the wall with a crack that sounded more than just painful. Dean got one knee under him to steady himself and started firing as quickly as possible. If they could tag team it enough, they might be able to keep the demon pinned between the two of them. And Dean had learned long ago how to fire a gun and recite a prayer at the same time.

" _Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas, omnis-_ "

The only problem was, Dean couldn't fire a gun, recite an exorcism and have a table thrown at him at the same time. The old diner tables might have looked rickety and falling apart in the dim light, but their metal legs were hard enough when they cracked against your skull. Getting pegged with one was enough to knock Dean to the ground, his gun out of his hands and send it sliding under the booth next to him.

He twisted around, trying to shove one arm under the seat to grab it while at the same time keeping his head up and alert. He had only the blink of an eye to make the decision to abandon the gun in favor of getting his arms up to defend himself as the demon closed in on him.

The first blow caught him on the forearm, nearly knocking him over and hurting like a bitch, but still better than catching it with his head. The second was closer, raining down on him in a sloppy blow to the shoulder and upper back as he curled in to protect himself. It was all power and force and no finesse and Dean took a third blow for the chance to wiggle his way under the demon's guard and slam his fist up into its stomach. You couldn't really knock the wind out of a demon – they didn't really breathe – but you could knock them back enough to slug them across the face.

Dean put his whole body into the blow, even if it meant staggering a bit himself. Thank god he did, however, because Mulder tried firing another round. Shooting while probably concussed from getting thrown into a wall was not a bright idea and Dean did _not_ appreciate it when it meant a bullet whizzing by his nose.

The demon apparently thought it was fucking hilarious and used a two handed open palm thrust to shove Dean back and off his feet. He crashed to the ground back near the door and groaned as all kinds of new things hurt.

Mulder had managed to get his feet under him and started emptying his clip into what used to be the Sheriff.

Dean struggled once more back to his feet, slipping on bits of broken chair and table top. Mulder was swaying a bit, not looking too steady on his feet, but he had both hands up, steadying his gun and a look on his face that was all focus. Dean spared a moment to check his brother. He knew he was still on his feet and fighting by the amount of noise coming from that side of the room. Sam had one nasty slash mark on his upper arm, but he was still moving easily enough. He just wasn't making any headway. While the main demon punched like he'd only ever seen it on TV, the woman clearly knew how to handle a blade. She wasn't giving Sam an inch and she had the endurance on her side to wait until she wore him down to win the fight. Scully was still hovering over the guy Mike, a small pool of blood leaking out from under the dude and her face tight and pinched in a way that suggested he wasn't going to make it, no matter who won here today.

She was also whispering frantically to him and it took Dean a moment to realize it wasn't reassurances or last rites.

Well then. Dean could get on board with this.

Mulder took another backhand to the face that was enough to almost snap his neck. He went flying like a rag doll. Dean got his feet under him in the meantime and _jumped_.

The Sheriff was shorter than Dean but built like a brick house and infested with a demon. The impact of Dean's weight catching him across the back didn't even make him stumble. Dean locked one arm around the guy's neck. Choking him out wouldn't work and was laughable as even an idea. But a neck lock was the best way for Dean to cling like a limpet to the man's back and make things as difficult as humanly possible for the demon. Sure, he had super strength on his side but it was hard to properly put that to use when something was on your back and busy yanking on your head.

It would only work for a few seconds and he could feel the exact moment the demon realized the real threat wasn't the monkey on his back but Agent Scully calmly but quickly reciting her way through a basic exorcism.

The demon jerk, obviously planning to jump ship and Dean did the only thing he could think of. He shoved his hand in the demon's mouth. It could have ended very badly for him. The human mouth was a nasty disgusting thing, and one with demon strength behind it could probably bite down and take half of his hand right off. But the demon was more interested in trying to get out of its body than harming Dean.

It likely wouldn't have been enough if Mulder hadn't managed to pull himself back into the fray. They'd given both of the agents disposable water bottles filled with holy water. As a sort of last resort, since it wouldn't actually stop the demon and it was sort of hard to effectively throw water at another person. But as a delay tactic, it worked wonders. Dean got a face full of cold water, but the demon under him screamed in agony on contact.

It was the last thing the demon did before Agent Scully sent his ass back to hell where it belonged.


	17. Epilogue

The Sheriff's body collapsed suddenly under him and Dean once more hit the floor hard. He gave himself a moment to groan and lament his lot in life before calling out, "Sammy?"

"Fine!" The voice was a bit short of breath but it didn't sound particularly pained. Princess could wait then until Dean got his own shit together.

"Other people?" Dean called out lazily.

"Still here." Mulder replied. He was even still on his feet. The empty bottle was half crushed in his hand but he held on to it the way a good soldier never let go of his gun. He reached out a hand and helped Dean force himself up to his feet. His knees and elbows were raw and bruised from banging against so many hard surfaces on his many introductions to the floor. His left shoulder ached in a way that was clear it was going to be stiff and useless for the next couple of days. But he wasn't bleeding too much and he didn't have a concussion, so he was doing better than the rest of the team.

"Nice work, Agent Scully," he commented, shuffling to turn to face her, his best charming grin spreading across his face. "I'm impressed." And he really was. You had to appreciate a girl who could fire a gun and recite perfect Latin.

Mulder was also staring at her. "What did they teach you in those catholic schools?" he asked, sounding a bit awed and intimidated.

Scully scowled back at him. "Don't be ridiculous, Mulder. I Googled it."

"You Googled an exorcism and managed it on the first try?" Sam asked.

She shrugged. "I studied Latin in school. Latin prayers all have a lot in common. I'm not one hundred percent sure I recited every line, but apparently it was enough. Are they dead now, the demons?"

Sam and Dean both scowled at the same time. "No," Dean grumbled. "But you kicked itheir asses well enough they won't be back for some time. Long enough for us to figure out a more permanent solution."

Scully sighed and sat back. "Will that be enough?" she asked and that was when Dean realized she wasn't actively trying to stop the bleeding any more. Mike, the gas station guy, wasn't moving and looked pale even in the crappy lighting. She saw him notice and her lips thinned. "He died almost right away. But pretending he was still alive and all I had time for seemed like good cover. No one was looking at me while I was focused on him."

"Nice work!" Dean reassured her, trying to move the conversation away from the dead body as quickly as possible. "Bastards didn't see it comin'. Good job."

"Now what?" Mulder asked. And there must have been enough of a wobble to his voice because Scully's attention switched sharply to him.

"Sit down before you fall down," she ordered. Mulder complied but frowned while he did so and repeated his question.

"Sam?" Dean demanded.

Boy Wonder didn't miss a beat. "If we remove whatever they've done to block out the angels, we should be able to get some help cleaning this place up."

"The wards?"

"Probably tied to this place," Sam answered, both brothers on the same page.

"Fire?"

Sam nodded. "Make it look like she started it," he added, gesturing to the dead woman at his feet. "Maybe we can at least keep the Sheriff's name clear."

Dean nodded and glanced at the FBI guys. This would hinge on their willingness to lie like a rug. "You think you can handle selling that? That the Sheriff tried to help you rescue our vic and died in the process?"

Mulder looked like he'd swallowed a lemon. Whole. But Scully just nodded thoughtfully. "How do we explain Mulder shooting him? Repeatedly?" And really, Dean hadn't expected her to be the one on board with covering this all up, but going by the chocked off noises Mulder was making, he was the one with a bigger issue at hiding the truth.

Dean looked at the body, taking in the blood stains and counting up rounds in his head. 'We should be able to clean them out. We'll collect up all the brass, dig out any bullets and soak and torch the whole place. A burnt body will hide most sins. But just to be safe, crazy lade shot him a couple of times, okay?"

Scully frowned at that. "Who is she? Are we actually pinning several homicides on an unknown woman…"

Sam wrinkled his nose. "Judging by the smell and her clothes, I don't think anyone's reported her missing. At least not recently. We don't have a lot of choice. It's either her or risk draggin' the Sheriff into this. A mentally imbalanced woman performing satanic rituals to kill men will go over better than a serial killer Sheriff. Trust me. You'd be surprised what communities can write off as individual insanity and how much easier that is to live with than the idea that a trusted official may have used his position to murder in cold blood."

"This is wrong!" Mulder finally exploded. "None of these people did those things and the thing that did is a real threat!"

"Good luck with that story, buddy," Dean snapped back snidely. He was not up for coddling that kind of nativity. "You wanna one way ticket to state run living, be my guest. The rest of us have actual work to do and that's kind of hard to accomplish when you're locked up in the looney bin."

"You could blame it on us," Sam offered in a tone that was much more gentle and understanding and consolatory. "Our reputation can't get any worse."

"No," Scully answered, her voice firm and the look she gave Mulder making it clear she was answering for them both. "You're right, Mulder, in that this threat still exists. But we have no way of providing evidence right now and drawing attention to it will only make it worse. Or do you want Dean and Sam Winchester to be blamed for yet more deaths that they didn't cause?"

"To be fair, we did shoot them a lot…" Dean pointed out in a drawl.

"Be quiet, Mr. Winchester."

"Yes, Ma'am," he replied cheekily.

* * *

Dean and Sam Winchester brought enough gasoline to burn down an apartment building and it was more than enough to make short work of the small roadside restaurant. They'd made sure to dowse the bodies and the altar liberally. It would make it hard for authorities to identify the remains, but as Dean commented, it would hide many sins.

Agent Scully kept that in mind as she wrote up her final report. Sins of omission were maybe not lies but it was still difficult to walk that fine line between reporting what she could and burying the rest. It was not a skill she wanted to come easily to her, but she understood the importance.

Mulder had struggled with the idea in the days since. She could see it in his face sometimes, the urge to start making proclamations and demanding answers. But thankfully he was more distracted when they returned to Virginia by going through each and every one of the Winchester cases and re-evaluating them based on what he now knew. He whined frequently about not getting to see the Winchesters' records or having a reliable way of contacting them again. When he ran out of cases linked to the brothers, he started reviewing the rest of his files for possible connections.

It kept him busy. For now.

* * *

Clean-up took forever and by the time they were done Dean felt like nothing more than one giant bruise. The agents hadn't been much help, but in some ways that was easier. Less awkward cleaning up a crime scene when the law wasn't watching you. The long trudge back to the car and the drive afterwards was made in silence. Yes, they had stopped the seal from being broken. But like any other case involving demons, they sure as hell hadn't actually won this one.

Mulder tried to get them to stay in town, or maybe meet him back at his place in the D.C. area, but it was a damn fool idea and everyone but him knew it. Dean and Sam needed to disappear again and put as much distance between themselves and this case as they could if they wanted to keep their names out of it.

So they bugged out that night. Loaded the car and drove as long as they could without falling asleep. It put them one state over, in another nameless motel for the night. Maybe they'd take a few days to recover. Or swing by Bobby's for a bit. At least maybe now they wouldn't have to worry about squabbling with Fox Fucking Mulder for cases.

Sam called first dibs on the shower so Dean spent a little time putting all of his 'tools' back where they belonged in the Impala. Everything had its own place, and it was important to keep everything in place for when you needed it. The only thing worse than failing a job was failing it because you weren't prepared.

So he had his head inside the trunk when Cas the freakin' Angel of the Lord decided to appear directly behind him. Reflex kicked in and he tried to spin around and stand up straight at the same time. It resulted in banging his poor head yet one more time.

"Godfuckingdamnit!" he yelped.

"Language, Dean Winchester," Castiel rumbled like the sound of thunder above.

"Personal space!" Dean yelped back. "Heart attacks! Not scaring the ever-livin' daylights out of the humans!"

Cas frowned as if this was _Dean's_ fault. "You should be more aware." He didn't wait for Dean's witty reply (it contained the words 'aware' and 'my ass'). "You disappeared for five days and 18 hours."

"Huh?"

Cas's frowny face got worse. "While stopping the demons on Owl's Head. You and your brother disappeared for five days and 18 hours."

Dean shrugged. "You're the one who said they had angel blocking mojo. We took care of it. With no help from you, by the way."

"We could not see the demons," Cas clarified. "We should have been able to see you. Do not do such a thing again. It is imperative that we be able to locate you at any time."

Which was bull shit and clearly not for the benefit of him or his brother. But Dean had to admit, the guy seemed really earnest. He grinned at him. "What's the matter, Cas? Worried?"

Sarcasm went right over the dude's head. "Yes," he replied solemnly. "Very worried."

And damn if Dean didn't believe him. At least a little bit.

* * *

Thank you everyone for sticking it out this long! I hope you enjoyed.

A quick plug, I'll have a Hannibal/Supernatural fic coming out in a couple of months, hopefully. It's a monster in length…. I'm at about 90K words and have about three more chapters to go. So stay tuned!

Thanks again for reading!


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